Read Ireland Book Reviews, September 1999

J.G. Farrell: The Making of a Writer by Lavinia Greacan
In 1979, in a remote corner of West Cork, J. G. Farrell was drowned while fishing from the rocks near his home. He was forty-four, and it had been only six years since he had won the prestigious Book Prize for his novel The Siege of Krishnapur and his much-loved novel Troubles was hailed as a modern classic. Based on her access to Farrell’s family and friends, as well as his notebooks and personal correspondence, Greacan’s biography disentangles not only the full circumstances of the novelist’s death, but the story of his life and how it informed everything he wrote. She has charted his private world and his travels during the long hard years of his literary apprenticeship. This biography is an important and illuminating work of a major Irish novelist as well as a moving personal story of a complicated man of great humour and brilliance.

A Literary Guide to Dublin by Vivien Igoe
This book is a fascinating companion to the city that has been the home to some of the most famous names in the history of literature and drama written in English, and the birthplace of three winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature: Beckett, Shaw and Yeats. In the book, the author traces the connection between writers and the city, from natives such as Wilde, Joyce, O’Casey and Behan; to those who spent most of their adult years there such as Kavanagh and Swift; and even visitors such as Dickens and Shelley. Entertaining anecdotes are woven in with details of areas the writers frequented and the locations in which their works were set, accompanied by contemporary and present-day photographs. Also included are five walking tours with maps, guides to the cemeteries where many of the writers are buried, and a separate section on literary pubs.

A Yeats Dictionary: Persons and Places in the Poetry of William Butler Yeats by Lester I. Conner
This is the first dictionary to identify, chart and explain in context the many proper names and place names that so famously enrich the poetry of William Butler Yeats and, just as famously, anchor that poetry to Ireland. In this compiling work, the author has relied upon Yeats’s own prose, the principal Yeats criticism, and the writings of Yeats’s friends and critics. The result is a work that warmly ushers the reader into the poems.

My Father’s Son by Frank O’Connor
A reprint of a classic and acclaimed memoir, this book is the second volume of Frank O’Connor’s autobiography and begins where An Only Child left off with the author coming out of the internment camp after being imprisoned as an Irish revolutionary and plunging into the burgeoning intellectual-political ferment of Dublin in the 1920s. O’Connor is a young writer struggling to find his place and his voice in a profoundly changed Ireland. The excitement of the Irish literary renaissance is made immediate as O’Connor tells of his friend the poet George Russell of his participation in the triumphs and rivalries of the Abbey Theatre. Here, beautifully rendered, are playwrights Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Lennox Robinson, and Sean O’Casey. Central to the book as he was to O’Connors life and work is the complex and majestic figure of William Butler Yeats. The memoir ends with Yeats’s death and with it O’Connor’s realisation that he can no longer divide his talent between his job and his passion. He begins, at last, his life as a writer.

The Waves Behind Us: Further Memoirs by Benedict Kiely
This book is a second volume of memoirs from one of Ireland’s most celebrated novelists, short story writers, essayists and broadcasters. It follows on from Drink to the Bird which dealt with Kiely’s boyhood and young manhood between the two world wars. Starting in 1941 and working his way to the present Kiely recalls his arrival in Dublin and introduces us to the many people who shade his narrative. Kiely’s recollections trace the path of his career as a Dublin journalist and, later, a serious prose writer. The memoir includes deft portraits and lyrical homages to such notable Irish writers as W.B. Yeats, James Joyce, Brendan Behan, Patrick Kavanagh and a host of others. Kiely’s vivid evocation of people, places and events demonstrates how a great city, bustling with culture and literature, shaped his many-faceted career.

Children of the Dead by Patrick MacGill
Written as fiction, this book is in fact Patrick MacGill’s autobiography. Starting with an account of his childhood in Donegal at the end of the 19th century, the story then moves on to Scotland. Peopled with extraordinary characters and suffused with humour, the book was immensely popular when it was first published. Its unflinching portrayal of the near slavery of the poor in Ireland and Scotland made it as influential in its own way as the work of social investigators in bringing about changes in Irish and British attitudes to poverty and destitution.

Swift: An Illustrated Life by Bruce Arnold
This provocative book examines this enigmatic figure in the light of his relationships with his lover Esther Van Homrigh, his war Esther Johnson, his patron Sir William Temple, and his male friends Congreve, Bolingbroke, Harley, Addison, Thomas Sheridan and others. Though often caricatured as a misanthrope, Swift can only be properly understood if we recognise his love of humanity and his capacity for friendship. Arnold traces this theme from Swift’s youth in Ireland to his literary and political apprenticeship at Moor Park in Surrey, and on through the years of greatness the brilliant satires and pamphlets, the Church diplomacy at the Court of Queen Anne, and the great writings of his maturity as Dean of St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin: the Draper’s Letters, A Modest Proposal, and Gulliver’s Travels. Swift’s long and varied life is illustrated through contemporary engravings of the places he lived in, the people he knew, and the figures who defined his age.

Kerry on My Mind by Gabriel Fitzmaurice
This book is a celebration of Kerry: the place, the people, the poetry. Beginning with a meditation on the meaning of Kerry to its natives, and to outsiders, it meanders through the lives of some of its most famous writers (John B. Keane, Bryan MacMahon and Brendan Kennelly), remembers its vibrant singing tradition, looks at its modern practices and ancient customs, and examines the pivotal role of the poet/teacher in this community.

The Ingredients of Poetry by Michael O’Flanagan
The first prosody published in Ireland in recent years, this book is intended as a guide to new writers and has a substantial section devoted to grammar and syntax. It features an analysis of the work of Thomas MacDonagh and Joseph Mary Plunkett, the executed 1916 leaders and of Francis Ledwidge who was killed in the Great War. It also includes examples of work by 45 modern Irish writers. ‘Tis by Frank McCourt is Our Book of the Month (Non-Fiction) for October 1999. Because we have had such a volume of enquiries regarding this particular title we have decided to send this announcement and review immediately upon receiving the book into stock today!

‘Tis: A Memoir by Frank McCourt
Angela’s Ashes was a publishing phenomenon. Frank McCourt’s critically acclaimed, lyrical memoir of his Irish-American childhood won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the Royal Society of Literature Award, and the Los Angeles Times Award amongst others, and rapidly became a word-of-mouth bestseller, topping all charts worldwide for over two years. It left readers and critics alike eager to hear more about Frank McCourt’s incredible, poignant life. ‘That’s your dream out now. That’s what my mother would say when we were children in Ireland and a dream we had came true. The one I had over and over was where I sailed into New York Harbor awed by the skyscrapers before me. I’d tell my brothers and they’d envy me for having spent a night in America till they began to claim they’d had that dream, too. I appealed to my mother. I told her it wasn’t fair the way the whole family was invading my dreams and she said, Arrah, for the love o’God, drink your tea and go to school and stop tormenting us with your dreams.’ ‘Tis is the story of Frank’s American journey from impoverished immigrant with rotten teeth, infected eyes and no formal education to brilliant raconteur and schoolteacher. Saved first by a straying priest, then by the Democratic party, then by the United States Army, and then by New York University which admitted him on a trial basis though he had no high school diploma Frank had the same vulnerable but invincible spirit at nineteen that he had a eight and still has today. And ‘Tis is a tale of survival as vivid, harrowing and often hilarious as Angela’s Ashes. Yet again, it is through the power of storytelling that Frank finds a life for himself. ‘It is only the best storyteller who can so beguile his readers that he leaves them wanting more when he’s done McCourt proves himself one of the very best’ (Newsweek). ‘Tis blesses readers with another chapter in McCourt’s story.

Read Ireland Book News Issue 100 Irish Music Companion to Irish Traditional Music edited by Fintant Vallely
Traditional music and song is Ireland’s universally recognised cultural expression. Since the late 1960s the traditional music scene has changed radically. Its commercial life has mushroomed bringing with it a huge growth in music tourism. Energetic debate on traditionalism in Irish music and a larger profile within the academic system has created a wealth of new approaches to playing and an expansion of academic research interests. This book attempts to draw much of this new work together. The editor, himself an accomplished musician and music writer, has harnessed the expertise of scores of musicians and commentators who between them present a remarkably comprehensive picture of the field. This book is not just the ideal reference for the interested enthusiast and session player, it also provides a unique resource for every library, school and home with an interest in the distinctive rituals, qualities and history of Irish traditional music and song.

Blooming Meadows: The World of Irish Traditional Musicians by Fintan Vallely and Charlie Piggott
This is a book of outstandingly warm, quirky and personality-laden pictures by the photographer Nutan. In sympathy with the typical slow fuse of his work, the moods and themes of these images are developed in the texts by Fintan Vallely and Charlie Piggot into personalities, lives, community and nation through biography, interview, comment, poetry and song. The voices are those of musicians and singers who have helped shape the revival of traditional music since the 1950s, along with today’s generation of talented, articulate and highly educated players. The overview is from the inside, but also looks back over the shoulder at the musician and music-lover placed, anachronistically, in an information-age society, among pop music market forces and technology, yet performing unaccompanied song from before the age of steam, 18th century social dance, acoustic melody-making a music that may be older than the pianoforte or as young as the microchip. Nostalgia, nationalism, romanticism, virtuosity and communitas here meet art and quiet confidence in cultural meaning.

Love and Music: The Glorious History of the Dublin Grand Opera Society (1941-1998) by Gus Smith
This book is a record of the achievements, past and present, of the Dublin Grand Opera Society. It is timely, it fills a music gap, and its statistics compiled by Paddy Brennan, are an important adjunct to the text. And at a glance, it is undoubtedly a fascinating pictorial record dating back as it does to the very first performance. It will revive interest in the early decades of the society’s history, as when it presented renowned German companies at the Gaiety as well as festivals of Italian Opera. There were times of financial crisis in the 60s and 70s which the society bravely survived. But the struggle to present opera in Ireland did not become any easier and even today Opera Ireland has to work tremendously hard to secure opera’s place in the musical sphere in Ireland. As this book amply shows, the society has a proud past and is guaranteed a prominent place in any musical gallery.

Ireland Best Slow Airs compiled by Waltons Music Store
110 of Ireland’s most beautiful and haunting melodies including Laments, Airs from old Gaelic songs, and O’Carolan compositions suitable for all melody instruments.

Ireland’s Best Session Tunes with Guitar Chords compiled by Waltons Music Store
110 of the most popular and enduring session tunes in Ireland and around the world. Join in wherever you go with this session-friendly collections of jigs, reels, hornpipes, polkas, slides, airs and more. Suitable for all melody instruments.

Ireland’s Best Polkas and Slides with Guitar Chords compiled by Waltons Music Store
110 all-time favourites. These polkas and slides will enhance your repertoire, liven up any session and are surprisingly easy to play. Suitable for all melody instruments.

Ireland’s Best Tin Whistle Tunes with Guitar Chords compiled by Claire McKenna

110 of the best tunes in any tin whistle player’s repertoire, specially chosen and arranged by one of Ireland’s top players and teachers. Graded for difficulty for everyone from beginner to advanced player.

Ireland’s Best Fiddle Tunes with Guitar Chords compiled by Paul McNevin 110 of the best tunes in any fiddler’s repertoire. Includes a special feature on rolls, cuts, triplets and other ornamentation.

Defending Ireland: The Irish State and Its Enemies Since 1922 by Eunan O’Halpin
This fascinating and original book is the first to analyse the evolution of internal security and external defence policy and practice in Ireland from independence to the present day. The author begins by examining the very limited concepts of external defence understood by the first generation of Irish leaders and the impact that has had on the defence forces. He explores the state’s defence and security relations with Britain and the United States and, drawing extensively on newly released records, he deals authoritatively with the problems of subversion, espionage, counterintelligence and codebreaking during the Second World War. In conclusion, the book analyses significant post-Second World War developments including anti-Communist co-operation with Western powers, the emergence of the United Nations service as a key element of Irish foreign and defence policy, the state’s response to the Northern Ireland crisis since 1969, and Ireland’s difficulties in addressing the collective security dilemmas facing the European Union. It is essential reading for anyone wishing to understand the development of independent Ireland since 1922.

The Spy in the Castle by David Neligan
David Neligan, a native of Templeglantine, Co. Limerick, was recruited by Michael Collins to act as a spy with G Division’s political branch (secret political police) base in Dublin Castle the heart of the British intelligence system in Ireland. The precarious role placed him in the centre of crucial events and brought him into contact with key individuals from both side of the conflict. Despite living with the constant threat of discovery, Neligan nevertheless succeeded in providing Michael Collins with a stream of invaluable information. A genius in the ‘grey’ world of intelligence, Neligan would go on to build a controversial career that included Director of Intelligence for the National Army during the Irish Civil War and later serving as Head of Special Branch of the Garda Siochana (Irish Police). This book is his frank account of his extraordinary experiences which was originally published in 1968.

The Burning of Bridget Cleary: A True Story by Angela Bourke
In 1895 twenty-six year-old Bridget Cleary disappeared from her house in rural Tipperary. At first, some said that the fairies had taken her into their stronghold in a nearby hill, from where she would emerge, riding a white horse. But then her badly burned body was found in a shallow grave. Her husband, father, aunt and four cousins were arrested and charged, while newspapers in nearby Clonmel, and then in Dublin, Cork and London attempted to make sense of what happened. In this lurid and fascinating book, we witness the collision of town and country, of storytelling and science, of old and new. The torture and burning of Bridget Cleary caused a sensation in 1895 which continues to reverberate more than a hundred years later.

Erin’s Royal Blood: Dynasties of Ireland by Peter Berresford Ellis
This book charts for the first time the amazing history of the survival of the royal Gaelic dynasties of Ireland, acknowledged to be amongst the most ancient in Europe. In 1541 there were some sixty prominent native Irish kings, dukes, counts, barons and other peers, collectively called ‘Chiefs’ by the English. Henry VIII, the first English king to proclaim himself ‘King of Ireland’, demanded that they exchange their titles for English earldoms swearing allegiance to him. In the ensuing Tudor Wars of Conquest few of those sixty Gaelic aristocrats survived. Today, only nineteen families maintain their ancient titles and are given ‘courtesy recognition’ by the Irish state. They live in Ireland and England, but also in Spain, Portugal, Zimbabwe, Australia and the United States of America. They still meet regularly in Ireland and play an active part in Irish cultural life. This book elucidates their extraordinary histories, the struggle for survival and their current lifestyles. With the full co-operation and approval of the families, the author is able to give not only the history but also a unique picture of the Gaelic aristocracy’s role in today’s world including their relationship to the modern republic.

A U.S. Spy in Ireland by Martin Quigley
During World War II the United States sent several intelligence agents to Ireland, including the head of the whole operation, William J. Donovan. Three were sent undercover: two were promptly uncovered by the Irish government. The third, Martin S. Quigley, retained his cover in Ireland during the whole of his star in 1943. His job was to check out the beliefs that existed abroad about Irish neutrality and to corroborate or reject what previous agents had found. Several hundred pages of documents relating to Quigley’s secret work in Ireland were declassified in 1997 and he decided to compile this book because his assessment of the Irish position was unhelpful to the Allies and was even pro-German. The American Minister, David Gray, was in the anti-de Valera camp. Quigley found that the Irish government, far from being pro-German, tacitly supported the Allied position while finding it politic to maintain the semblance of neutrality. Quigley’s reports, reproduced in this volume, provide fascinating insights into the Ireland of 1943. It is the author’s hope that this book will dispel some of the myths that surround Irish neutrality.

Political Issues in Ireland Today 2nd ed. edited by Neil Collins
This volume covers a wide range of policy areas in the Republic and Northern Ireland. It fills a major gap in the academic literature on Irish politics, providing readers with a comprehensive introduction to the issues dominating Irish political debates in both parts of Ireland. The book brings together senior political scientists to provide a reliable and up-to-date guide to current developments. These contributors explore Irish politics in a comparative manner, first addressing constitutional matters, and then discussing public policies. This thoroughly revised new edition also analyses the important new areas of corruption and ethics, and the marketing of public services.

Executed: Tom Williams and the IRA by Jim McVeigh
Tom Williams was one of six IRA volunteers sentenced to death by hanging in 1942. A group of eight, including two women, had mounted a diversionary operation to take the attention away from three Republican parades held in Belfast to celebrate the 1916 Easter Rising. All such parades had been banned under the Stormont regime since the partition of Ireland and the introduction of the Civil Authorities (Special Powers) Act of 1922. A police patrol managed to capture the group but not before an exchange of shots which resulted in the death of RUC constable Patrick Murphy. Although only 18 years old, Tom Williams was in charge of the unit and in a controversial statement to police he assumed full responsibility for the shooting. Following a remarkable international reprieve campaign, the colonial Governor of Northern Ireland commuted five of the six death sentences to terms of penal servitude. But the British decided that Tom Williams should hang. Although he is remembered in song, an exhibition and a recent play, his life story has never before appeared in print. The author, himself a republican prisoner, has pieced together a revealing account of the fateful operation and its aftermath. He has been ably assisted by leading Republican Joe Cahill, one of those sentenced to death with Tom Williams.

Irish Politics and the Spanish Civil War by Fearghal McGarry
This book examines not only the response of the Irish Free State to the Spanish Civil War, but also tells the story of the military intervention of almost 1000 Irishmen who fought on opposing sides of the war a story which has been the source of much curiosity and controversy. The political extremism which motivated this exodus is an area of increasing popular and historiographical interest, but these questions have more often been considered in an Irish context rather than as a part of the ideological struggle which gripped Europe in the 1930s. This is an important study which identifies many of the critical preoccupations of 20th century Irish politics. The Irish involvement in one of the pivotal European conflicts of the twentieth century was indicative of the divisions and historical complexity of Ireland itself. Those divisions, although transported momentarily to the European mainland, nevertheless indicate a sophisticated and passionate diversity of opinion during a crucial phase of Irish foreign policy.

Discover the Islands of Ireland by Alex Ritsema
The islands of Ireland, mainly deserted now, once sustained thriving communities. Their legacy survives in the prehistoric monuments, the monastic sites, the medieval castles, the field patterns and the abandoned dwellings. This book is a superb companion to those beautiful and dramatic locations. Combining detailed research with original photography, this book forms a comprehensive guide to these fascinating and unspoilt locations. It is generously illustrated with maps as well as evocative photographs; it describes all aspects of the islands landscape, history, wildlife, etc.; and it provides a thorough appreciation of island economies, cultures and people.

A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle
‘My mother looked up at the stars. There were plenty of them up there. She lifted her hand. It swayed as she chose one. Her finger pointed. ‘- There’s my little Henry up there. Look it. ‘I looked, her other little Henry sitting beside her on the step. I looked up and hated him. She held me but she looked up at her twinkling boy.’ Born in the slums of Dublin in 1901, his father a one-legged whorehouse bouncer and settle of scores, Henry Smart has to grow up fast. By the time he can walk he’s out robbing, begging, often cold, always hungry, but a prince of the streets. At fourteen, already six foot two, Henry’s in the General Post Office on Easter Monday 1916, a soldier in the Irish Citizen Army, fighting for freedom. A year later he’s ready to die for Ireland again, a rebel, a Fenian and soon, a killer. With his father’s wooden leg as his weapon, Henry become a republican legend one of Michael Collins’ boys, a cop killer, an assassin on a stolen bike. An historical novel until none before it, this book marks a new chapter in Roddy Doyle’s writing. It is a vastly more ambitious book than any he has written before, the first in a projected trilogy which is already being hailed as a ‘masterpiece’ in the Irish press. A subversive look behind the legends of Irish republicanism, at its centre a passionate love story, this is ultimately a triumph work of fiction.

The Golden Age of Irish Art: The Medieval Achievement 600-1200 by Peter Harbison
During the years before and after the year 1000, the remote and seemingly unpromising land of Ireland produced manuscripts and metalwork that put it in the front rank of artistic achievement, not just in the Europe of its time, but in the whole perspective of world history. This flowering of the arts had a religious context: Christianity reached Ireland in the 5th century and found its most vigorous expression in monasticism. The result was a concentration of creative energy on the arts of the church, notably illuminated Gospels such as the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow, precious objects like the Tara Brooch and the Ardagh Chalice, and a whole treasury of crosses, reliquaries and manuscripts. The bizarre imagination, minute detail and decorative invention that made this art seem to be ‘the work of angels rather than men’ is still unequalled. But magnetic and fascinating as these beautiful objects are, the lack of dates and documentation means that they have long been the subject of scholarly dispute. This book is the first serious assessment for a generation, during which time painstaking research has added a wealth of new information and fresh insights. No one is better qualified to present the most up-to-date account of the whole period that Peter Harbison, the acknowledged authority in Irish medieval archaeology. Surveying the art of Ireland chronologically, the book is illustrated with over 200 photographs, many in colour, of illuminated manuscripts, metalwork, architecture and sculpture, making this the most lavish as well as the most authoritative survey of the subject available.

The Celts edited by V. Kruta, O.H.Frey, B. Raftery and M. Szabo (Hardback; 100 IEP / 135 USD)
This is the absolutely phenomenal book that accompanied the major exhibition at the Palazzo Grassi, Venice, Italy. It brings together over 2,200 worked from 200 museums in 24 nations, in conjunction with the contributions of over 100 scholars. It contains over 100 illustrations, over 800 of which are in colour. This book is the definitive record of a people who, in great part, are Europe.