How the Irish fared in early cartoons

Caricature and the Irish: Satirical prints from the Library of Trinity College Dublin, c.1780 –1830, by  Nicholas  K. Robinson (Four Courts Press, €40.00 / £35.00) Felix M. Larkin   E.B. White, the noted children’s author, for decades a literary stalwart of  the New Yorker, that great home for cartoonists of all kinds over the last…

Democracy in today’s world: can it survive?

Democracy in today’s world: can it survive? Adventures in Democracy: The Turbulent World of People Power by Erica Benner (Allan Lane, £25.00 / €29.50) This short book by political philosopher Erica Benner is a timely meditation on the nature of democracy, both ancient and modern. It is timely because democratic values are under threat everywhere today,…

O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy: the Druid production of his three plays set in the Irish revolution

Sean O’Casey’s Dublin trilogy – The Shadow of a Gunman (1923), Juno and the Paycock (1924) and The Plough and the Stars (1926) – was the first effort at demythologising the Irish revolution in the public sphere. As Conor Cruise O’Brien wrote, these plays “are not revolutionary, and are even counter-revolutionary in their implications and…