Haughey by Gary Murphy (Gill Books, €27.99/£25.99) The distinguished philosopher, Sir Anthony Kenny, wrote apropos of an encounter with Charles J. Haughey that “on no other occasion in my life has anyone, with a straight face, told me so many lies that he knew were lies, and that he knew I knew were lies”. Many…
Birth of a State; the Anglo-Irish Treaty, Micheál Ó Fathartaigh and Liam Weeks (Irish Academic Press, €19.95/£17.99) The Treaty: the gripping story of the negotiations that brought about Irish independence and led to the Civil War, Gretchen Friemann (Merrion Press, €16.95) Apart from two commemorative stamps issued by An Post, the centenary of the signing of…
Midnight in London: The Anglo-Irish Treaty Crisis, 1921 by Colum Kenny (Eastwood Books, €9.99) Scholars and others continue to mull over the minutiae of the negotiations that led to the Anglo-Irish Treaty signed in the early hours of the morning on December 6, 1921. Even now a hundred years later, there is a great deal…
Between two Hells: the Irish Civil War by Diarmaid Ferriter (Profile Books, €20/€24.69) Felix M. Larkin How does a nation mark the centenary of a civil war? This is a problem which we in Ireland have to confront in 2022. Prof. Diarmaid Ferriter’s advice in this book is that we “need to factor in restraint” and…