May Tyrants Tremble repositions William Drennan as the father of Irish democracy. The brazen walls of separation he so eloquently lamented are with us still, but his story shines a light on one of the great mysteries of Irish history: what happened to Presbyterian republicanism after 1798? ...
Almost a century after his untimely death in 1922, this lively and insightful new assessment explores the man Michael Collins described as ‘father of us all’ and reclaims Arthur Griffith as the founder of both Sinn Fein and the Irish Free State. ...
Covering the years 1920–1925, Without a Dog’s Chance is the first major study of Northern nationalists’ role in the Boundary Commission that they, and their allies in the Irish Free State, had hoped to use to end partition and destroy the new Northern state. For Northern nationalists, the partition of Ireland was an intensely traumatic event, not only because it consigned almost half a million nationalists to a government that was not of their ...
Chief of Staff of the IRA, successor to Michael Collins as Commander in Chief of the National Army, founding member of Cumann na nGaedheal and later leader of Fine Gael: Richard Mulcahy was a leading figure in revolutionary Ireland and the new Irish State. But who was the enigmatic man behind the myth? Conspiratorial IRB nationalist; stubborn military tribune; pragmatic, political officeholder; or a fascinating combination of these and other tra ...
The 1921 partition of Ireland had huge ramifications for almost all aspects of Irish life and was directly responsible for hundreds of deaths and injuries, with thousands displaced from their homes and many more forced from their jobs. Two new justice systems were created; the effects on the major religions were profound, with both jurisdictions adopting wholly different approaches; and major disruptions were caused in crossing the border, with ...
During the Irish Civil War, eighty-three prisoners were executed after trial by military court. The Irish Civil War: Law, Execution and Atrocity explores the pressures that drove the provisional government to try prisoners for arms offences by military courts, and how, at a time of great crisis, the rule of law evaporated and the new policy morphed into reprisal executions. More than 125 further prisoners were killed in the custody of the state ...
This landmark new study of the life of Republican leader Liam Mellows gathers letters, speeches, articles and IRA documents from archives in Ireland, the UK and the United States together for the first time to form an insightful analysis of Mellows’ short but dramatic life. It examines his beliefs, fraught personal relationships, political betrayals and intrigue, and his struggle in the face of seemingly overwhelming odds. Mellows was at the f ...
Despite outliving him by 68 years, Mary Ann McCracken’s legacy is overshadowed by that of her more famous brother, executed United Irishman Henry Joy McCracken. She was, however, an abolitionist, a social reformer and an activist who fought for the rights of women and Belfast’s poor throughout a long life that encompassed the most turbulent years of Irish history. As treasurer, secretary and chair of the Ladies Committee, she helped girls from ...
The epic Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, has been extensively chronicled. The largest seaborne invasion in history, it began the liberation of German-occupied France, and later Europe, from Nazi control, laying the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. What is less well known, however, is that thousands of Irish and members of the Irish diaspora were among the Allied units that landed on the ...
