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Read Ireland Book Reviews, September 1998
Irish Houses and
Gardens by the Archives of Country Life by Sean O’Reilly
For over 100 years, Country Life has been publishing regular articles
on country houses of Ireland and Great Britain. From the start, its definitive
texts were illustrated with specially commissioned photography by some
of the century’s pre-eminent architectural photographers, a practice which
endowed the magazine with a unique photographic archive. The magazine
was first drawn to Ireland shortly after 1910, and soon the then-new and
growing interest in Georgian architecture led its writers to explore the
unique contribution made by Irish architects and craftsmen to the development
of the 18th century house. The result was a series of magisterial articles
on such major monuments as Castletown, Castlecoole, Caledon and Russborough.
The beauty and comprehensiveness of these illustrations, taken predominantly
on glass-plate negatives, is without equal. Yet the magazine had wider
interests that then Georgian tradition alone: its influential enthusiasm
for the work of Lutyens led to photographs of the architect’s work in
Ireland, including Lambay and Howth, being published soon after the buildings
and gardens were completed, and the magazine remained sensitive to the
inspiration Lutyens derived from medieval and classical Irish traditions.
In the 1960s, broadening tastes led Country Life’s writers to explore
the country’s major Victorian houses, such as Adare Manor and Humewood
Castle. As the pace of loss and destruction of so many houses quickened
in the middle of the century, the magazine’s photographs became an increasingly
important, and often unique, record of what had gone. Perhaps most poignant
of all are those which capture Powerscourt’s magnificent interiors before
they were destroyed by fire in 1074. Even where houses have survived,
dispersal of their contents means that Country Life’s photographs are
the finest, if not the only, records of their furnishings. Here, Sean
O’Reilly, one of Ireland’s leading architectural historians, h as selected
over 200 of the archive’s most outstanding photographs, featuring twenty
major houses which range in date from medieval castles to the 20th century
decorative delights of Birr. His text provides the essential historical
background to an appreciation of some of Ireland’s greatest buildings,
making this book not only an important survey, but also a portfolio of
classic photographs of unrivalled beauty and significance.
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Death in Summer
by William Trevor
William Trevor’s most recent novel, Death in Summer (1998), is a riveting
and wonderfully sympathetic portrait of the distress and damage that lie
at the heart of some lives - both those that are obviously afflicted and
those that appear to be blessed. There were three deaths that summer.
The first was Letitia’s, sudden and quite unexpected, leaving her husband
Thaddeus haunted by the details of her last afternoon, a drizzling Thursday
in June. They had spent it arguing in their comfortable house in the Essex
countryside, until Thaddeus reluctantly promised to visit a woman from
his past who has down on her luck - a promise he had no intention of keeping.
The next death came later, after Thaddeus’s mother-in-law had helped him
to interview the young women who had answered their advertisement for
a nanny to look after Letitia’s baby. None was suitable - least of all
the last one, with her small, sharp features, her shabby clothes exuding
a distinct whiff of cigarettes, her badly typed reference - so Letitia’s
mother moved in herself. But then, just as the household was beginning
to settle down, the last of the nannies surprisingly returned, her unwelcome
arrival heralding the third of the summer’s tragedies. This book is a
truly remarkable work.
Irish Home Rule
1867-1921 by Alan O’Day
This book is the first account of
Irish Home Rule to explain all of the self-government plans, placing them
in context and examining the motives behind the schemes. The book makes
a clear distinction between material and moral Home Rulers. The former
appealed especially to outsiders, some Protestants and the intelligentsia,
who saw in self-government a means to reconcile Ireland’s antagonistic
traditions. In contrast, material Home Rulers viewed a Dublin parliament
as a forum for Catholic interests. This account reappraises the Home Rule
movement from a fresh angle. By getting away from the usual division drawn
between physical force and constitutional nationalists, the author maintains
that an ideological continuity runs from Young Ireland, the Fenians, the
early Home Rulers including Isaac Butt an d Charles Stewart Parnell, to
the Gaelic Revivalists and the men of 1916. These nationalists are distinguishable
from material Home Rulers not on t he basis of methods or strategy but
through a fundamental ideological cleavage.
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1916 Rebellion
Handbook with an introduction by Declan Kiberd
This book is a complete and connected narrative of the Rising, compiled
contemporaneously with the event. It contains detailed accounts of the
fighting, the story of the Great Fires with lists of premises involved.
Military and Rebel Proclamations and Despatches. Punishment of Rebels
full Record of Sentences. Casualities Official Lists of Military, Royal
Irish Constabulary, Dublin Metropolitan Police, Volunteer Training Corps,
and Rebels. Names of Persons Interred in Cemeteries. Official Lists of
Prisoners Deported and Released. A special map illustrates the area of
fighting. Despatches of Sir John Maxwell and Viscount French. Honours,
Promotions and Awards to Military, Police and Civilians. Courts-Martial
at Richmond Barracks - Reports of Public Trials. Sir Roger Casement’s
Landing, Capture, Trial and Execution. Hardinge Commission of Inquiry
and Simon Commission of Inquiry Evidence and Reports. Work of the Hospitals
St John Ambulance City and County of Dublin Red Cross Societies. Facsimile
Reproductions of Rebel Proclamations. Names of Prisoners Released under
General Amnesty. Photographs, Personal Notes and New Index. Essential
for anyone interest in the Easter Rising.
Death of an Irish
Tinker by Bartholomew Gill
A Peter McGarr Mystery. A body is
found shackled to the upper branches of the tallest tree in Ireland. The
victim is a ‘Tinker,’ one of the mysterious class of itinerant travellers
who have roamed Ireland for generations. The murder bears all the signs
of being the work of Desmond Bacon, ‘the Toddler,’ brutal king of Ireland’s
heroin trade. But who was the deceased and why was he killed? The answer
lies with a Tinker woman named Biddy Nevins, who may be the only person
able to put Bacon away that is, if Peter McGarr and his crew can get to
her before the Toddler does.
Mary, Mary by Julie
Parsons
This book is a gripping psychological
thriller set in contemporary Dublin. A phone call late on a hot Dublin
evening. An anxious mother, enquiring about her daughter. It she’d said
she wasn’t coming home If she’d rung Then, a week later, the full dreadful
story beginning to unfold. The policeman, McLoughlin, watching as the
green cover is pulled back from the mortuary slab. The young woman’s battered
and mutilated body exposed. And for Margaret, the dull, aching realisation
that his is not can never be allowed to be the end. Margaret is a psychiatrist,
recently returned to Dublin after many years abroad. To a city where she
once loved and shone. She came back to nurse her dying mother and now
her daughter Mary is dead
John Stanislaus
Joyce by John Wyse Jackson and Peter Costello
The influence of the father was profound
and apparent: James Joyce retold many of his father’s anecdotes in his
writings. To an extent never before conceded, the lifework of James was
an imaginative recreation not of his own life but of his father’s. This
is the story of the prodigal father!
Dublin’s Literary
Pubs by Peter Costello
For generations Dublin’s pubs have
been one of the city’s treasures. The y are at the heart of its social
life, as central to the city as cafes are to Paris a home from home for
Dublin’s famous writers. On this wonderful tour through the streets of
Dublin you’ll learn about the life and custom s of pub life, meet the
wits and the characters, and revel in the uniquely Irish atmosphere. With
a little literature, some history, and an abundance of craic, this very
entertaining volume allows the reader to follow the occasionally stumbling
footsteps of Irish literary legends such as Brendan Behan and Patrick
Kavanagh as well as fictional creations such as Leopold Bloom and the
Ginger Man.
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Prejudice in Ireland
Revisited by Micheal Mac Greil
This book is an outstanding contribution
to our knowledge of Irish society and understanding of racism in Ireland
in all its various manifestations. It is much more that a study of prejudice
and tolerance towards social group s and minorities; it also provides
a comprehensive survey of Irish attitude s and values. It is not only
authoritative and informative but readable an d interesting. The findings
present a challenge to us all, and demand thought and attention from politicians,
lawyers, opinion formers and indeed every one of us. The book is a goldmine
of accessible information, particularly valuable because it does not just
set out Irish attitudes on a wide range of issues but shows how they have
changed since the early 70s. This makes i t fascinating reading for anyone
interested in social change in Ireland.
Magennis VC: The
Story of Ireland’s only winner of the Victoria Cross by George Fleming
James Magennis was born in West Belfast
and served in the Royal Navy in World War II. He was the only person from
Northern Ireland to win the Victoria Cross, the only naval rating with
a VC to survive the war and the only person in naval history to exit a
submarine in a diving suit, perform a military operation and return to
the same submarine. Yet while honoured in his adopted town of Bradford
England, he was made to feel unwelcome and virtually forgotten in his
home town of Belfast. The author rescues Magennis from obscurity in a
book that begins with Magennis’s life in Wes t Belfast in the 1920s and
1930s. Magennis escaped Belfast’s poverty by joining the Royal Navy in
1935. The middle part of the book is packed with adventure and history
of war at sea, and finishes with Magennis winning the Victoria Cross in
1945. The closing chapters bring the reader back to the reality of his
return to Belfast where the political and religious problems had not changed.
He was an embarrassment to the Unionist establishment and unwanted by
his fellow Catholics. Forced to leave the city, Magennis went to England
where he was simply accepted as a war hero. Always a quiet man who never
sought glory, he died in obscurity in 1986.
The Clash of the
Ash in Foreign Fields: Hurling Abroad by Seamus King
From the beginning the Gaelic Athletic
Association attempted to spread the gospel of hurling outside Ireland.
Star teams of hurlers were sent abroad to advertise the fame and hurling
was organised among the Irish diaspora. This book tells the history of
these efforts and how the game was played in the United Kingdom and North
America, in Argentina and South Africa, in Australia and New Zealand,
in fact in any place the Irish settled in substantial numbers. The book
is a follow-up to The History of Hurling b y the same author, is over
175 large format pages long and contains over 50 black-and-white photographs.
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Richard Brinsley
Sheridan: A life by Linda Kelly
The first night of Richard Brinsley
Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, on 8 May 1777, was one of the great
dates in theatrical history. From then on , Sheridan was launched by his
fame as a playwright into the ‘little great world’ of 18th century society.
Sheridan’s comedies and his comic op era, The Duenna were all written
by the time he was 28. For the next 30 y ears he was wholly involved in
his twin careers an manager of Drury Lane theatre and Member of Parliament.
At a time when politics were dominated by a few aristocratic families,
he rose above the inbuilt disadvantages of his poverty and Irish background
to become one of the greatest parliamentary figures of the age, greater
even, in the opinion of the Prime Minister William Pitt, than his leader
Charles James Fox. Linda Kelly’s biography , drawing on a wide variety
of published and unpublished sources, gives a comprehensive picture of
Sheridan’s tempestuous and brilliant career.
A Flame Now Quenched:
Rebels and Frenchmen in Leitrim, 1793-1798 by Liam Kelly
The Irish rebellion of 1798 comprised
a scattered series of local uprisings and desperate incursions that, tragically
for the rebels, failed to cohere. This fascinating portrait of County
Leitrim in the 1790s provides important insights into the rebellion in
Connaught. In Leitrim, the spirit of rebellion peaked in 1795 three years
before General Humbert’s French troops and their Irish allies marked almost
the full length of the country, with the government’s superior force in
pursuit, towards their eventual defeat just over the Longford border at
Ballinamuck. Leitrim was shaken by violent Defender disturbances in 1793
and 1795, culminating in the battle of Drumcollop, which brought the county
to a state of insurrection. Following the battle of the Diamond in County
Armagh and the formation of the Orange Order in September 1795, large
numbers of refugees from Ulster descended into Leitrim, bringing with
them revolutionary ideas and a sense of outrage that helped to keep the
flame of rebellion alive. But Leitrim had risen too early, and the government’s
suppression of the Defenders and, later, the United Irishmen, was brutally
effective. The author of this book has mad e extensive use of local and
archival sources to produce and authoritative and accessible account complete
with maps, illustrations and original documents of the two strands of
history: the rise and fall of the Defender and United Irish movements
in Leitrim in the mid-1790s, and the French invasion of Connaught, which
began promisingly but soon became a march towards certain defeat, with
dire consequences for the Irish rebels who flew to the French standard.
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The Williamite
War in Ireland 688-1691 by Richard Doherty
This book is an account of the war
that convulsed Ireland from 1688 to 16 91, the echoes of which can be
heard to this day. This is a military historian’s view of that war which
describes the major battles and sieges , including the Boyne, Aughrim,
Derry and Limerick, as well as actions that are not so well known such
as the sieges of Carrickfergus, Charlemont and Athlone. In these pages
the reader also meets some of the principal commanders, including the
two kings who fought at the Boyne and men such as Tyrconnell, Ginkel,
Kirke and Solms. Above them all tower the names of Marlborough and Sarsfield,
while the talent of the duke of Berwick begins to flower during the war.
The author challenges some of the accepted myths of the Williamite war,
including those surrounding the siege of Derry, and h e also analyses
why the final victory went to the Williamites rather than t o the Jacobites,
concluding that the reasons were entirely military and political rather
that as a result of any moral superiority of the victors.
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Manus O’Connell’s
Life of Colum Cille edited by Brian Lacey
From c.1510 Maghnus O Domhnaill was
a leading political figure in the north-west of Ireland. Between 1537
and 1555 he was chieftain of Tir Conaill. In 1532 he completed the greatest
cultural achievement of his life, the composition of the Beatha Colaim
Chille or ‘Life’ of the sixth-century monastic gounder who Manus claimed
as his ‘high saint and kinsman in blood’. The ‘Life’ is an extraordinary
work, running to nearly 100,000 words of verse and prose, written, for
the most part, in clear, elegant Irish. It is a compendium of all that
we known or more correctly believed about Colum Cille in Manus’ day. Like
the life of Manus himself , the Beatha Colaim Chille is being recognized
increasingly as an example o f the extension to Gaelic Ireland of Renaissance
ideas and standards. Although the Beatha is not our best source for reconstructing
the life of Colum Cille, it does provide an insight into the beliefs,
pratices and cultural institutions of Gaelic Ireland in the early part
of the 16th century, prior to the onset of the Reformation and the Tudor
conquest.
A Wexford Childhood:
1915-1930 by Mary Finn
This book is a moving and highly evocative
account of an idyllic childhood spent in rural Ireland during the years
between the two World Wars. With rare power and beauty, the author succeeds
in capturing what it was like to be young when farming and seafaring were
still largely self-sufficient, mutually supportive community endeavours
based on sound ecological principles. Viewed through the eyes of a bright
and unusually perceptive child, Mary Finn’s often poignant yet humorous
book resonates with memorable descriptions of the rich assortment of characters
who once populated her world, as well as the colourful rituals and seasonal
rhythms of Irish country life.
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Writing Ulster
Issue 5: American & Ulster: A Cultural Correspondence edited by Bill
Lazenblatt
This issue of Writing Ulster explores
the cultural connections between Ulster and America. It contains articles
by Americans about Ulster, or about Ireland in general, as well as articles
by Ulster folk about America. From Oxford, Mississippi, James Mullan provides
a novelist’s perspective on Irish immigrant experience, whole Matt McKee
of Larne, County Antrim, looks somewhat sceptically at claims that Davy
Crockett was of Ulster extraction. Frank Ormsby conjures images of those
‘Yanks’ who were billeted here during the war, on one of their nostalgic
return visits, while Douglas Carson muses on the possibility that John
Wayne might have ended up as Prime Minister of Northern Ireland! Sophie
King evokes memories of American film and its significance to her girlhood
in Belfast, and Jenny Cornell analyses representations of the Troubles
and television drama, while her short story set in Belfast points to a
more positive future. Music as a medium of cultural interaction does not
go unnoticed, with essays on fiddle-playing by Hilary Bracefield and on
Jazz influences on his own work by celebrated Ulster poet Michael Longley.
Maureen Murphy details the lives of Irish servant girls in America as
recorded in the literature of the 19th century, while Paul Muldoon reflects
on his life in Hopewell, with a New Englandly haiku. The Americanisation
of Ulster is observed in Lee Wright’s discuss ion of design features in
the province, while Jerushia McCormack looks more sceptically at the same
process as it affects Irish life in general. The book also contains new
poetry from: Fred Johnstone, Richard Godden, Robert Graecen, Danny Barbare,
and Bev Braune.
The Untouchable
by John Banville
John Banville, born in Wexford in
1945, is one of Ireland’s finest writer s and this is perhaps his finest
novel. It is engrossing and exquisitely written. One critic stated that
Banville is the ‘most intelligent and stylish novelist currently working
in English.’ It tells the story of Victor Maskell, a former spy who has
been betrayed. After the announceme nt in the British House of Commons
and the hasty revelations of his double life of wartime espionage, his
disgrace is public, his knighthood revoked, and his position as curator
of the Queen’s pictures terminated. This book explores Maskell’s life
in an attempt to answer the questions: For whom has he been sacrificed?
To what has he sacrificed his life?
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Tara Road by Maeve
Binchy
This new blockbuster by Ireland’s
most popular novelist is set in contemporary Dublin and on the north-east
coast of the United States. It is the interlocking story of two women,
Ria Lynch and Marilyn Vine, who hav e never met. Their lives have almost
nothing in common. Ria lives in a bi g ramshackle house in Tara Road,
Dublin, which is filled day and night with the family and friends on whom
she depends. Marilyn lives in a college t own in Connecticut, New England,
absorbed in her career, an independent and private woman who is very much
her own person. Two more unlikely friends would be hard to find. Yet a
chance phone call brings them together and they decide to exchange homes
for the summer. Ria goes to America in the hope that the change will give
her space and courage to sort out the huge crisis in her life that is
threatening to destroy her. Marilyn goes to Ireland to recover in peace
and quiet from the tragedy that she keeps secret from the world, little
realising that Tara Road will prove to be the leas t quiet place on earth.
They borrow each other’s houses, and during the course of that magical
summer they find themselves borrowing something of each other’s lives
and suffering grows into a story of discovery, unexpected friendships
and new hope. By the time Ria and Marilyn eventually meet, they find that
they have altered the course of each other’s lives forever.
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Jonathan Swift:
A biography by Victoria Glendinning
Jonathan Swift (1667-1745) is an inexhaustibly intriguing figure in the
literary and political history of Ireland and England. Best known as the
author of Gulliver’s Travels, he was an ordained clergyman whose enemies
thought did not believe in God. He became a legendary Dean of St Patrick
‘s Cathedral in Dublin, whose ambition for church preferment in England
was perpetually frustrated. For four short, intoxicating years he was
the intimate of Queen Anne’s chief ministers, and their publicists and
propagandist a ‘spin doctor’ before the term was invented. His private
life was intense and enigmatic. Two younger women, whom he called Stella
and Vanessa, moved to Ireland to be close to him. He made both of the
unhappy. Poet, polemicist, pamphleteer and wit, Jonathan Swift is the
master of shock. His furious satirical responses to the corruption and
hypocrisy he saw around him in private and public life have every relevance
for our own times. His black imagination, and his preoccupation with the
foulness that lies beneath the thin veneer of artifice and civilisation,
gave a new adjective ‘Swiftian’ to the lexicon of criticism. Like his
Gulliver in the land of Lilliput, Swift is a problem in perspective and
scale. Victoria Glendenning, prize-winning biographer, has taken a literary
zoom-lens to illuminate this proud and intractable man. She investigates
at close range the main events and relationships of Swift’s life, promising
a compelling and provocative portrait set in a rich tapes try of controversy
and paradox.
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