The Dáil debate on whether to accept the Treaty opened on December 21, 1921. The Treaty had been signed early on December 6. The debate took place in the low-ceilinged two room lecture hall, on the second floor of what is now the National Concert Hall. My memory, as a UCD student who attended lectures…
Living with History: Occasional Writings by Felix M Larkin (Kingdom Books, €24.00/£20.50) Felix Larkin will be well-known to readers of the books page of The Irish Catholic for his many perceptive reviews of books about Irish and American history. He is a former senior official in the Department of Finance and was later in the National…
The Best Catholics in the World: The Irish, the Church and the End of a Special Relationship by Derek Scally (Sandycove/Penguin Ireland, €20) Derek Scally is a journalist with The Irish Times, based in Germany for the last 20 years. His perspective on the subject of Catholicism in Ireland is shown in the dedication of the book…
The Powerful and the Damned: Private Diaries in Turbulent Times by Lionel Barber (W. H. Allen, £25.00 / €20.25) Over Christmas, I read the book with the above arresting title. It is by Lionel Barber, editor of the Financial Times for the past 15 years, who has just retired. It is a gallop through the last…
Retreat from Revolution: the Dáil Courts 1920 to 1924 by Mary Kotsonouris (Irish Academic Press, €18.95) This book shows that Ireland did really undergo a revolution between 1919 and 1923. The old legal order was progressively undermined, delegitimised, and eventually overthrown. But it was not fully and formally replaced until the enactment of the Courts of…
Freedom is a Land I Cannot See by Peter Cunningham (Sandstone Press, £8.99) Peter Cunningham’s latest novel, Freedom is a Land I Cannot See, is one of his best. He shows great skill and sympathy in evoking living conditions of a century ago, when Ireland, or more particularly north rural Dublin was passing through revolutionary turmoil,…
The Arms Crisis of 1970: The plot that never was by Michael Heney (Head of Zeus, £20.00/€23.00) This important but controversial new book by Michael Heney, published recently in the midst of our present pandemic crisis, challenges the received historical interpretation of the attempt in 1970 to import arms for possible use in Northern Ireland. Rather…
Burned: The inside story of the ‘cash for ash’ scandal and Northern Ireland’s secretive new elite by Sam McBride (Merrion Press, €19.95) The scandal of Northern Ireland’s Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) is one of bureaucratic failure, sloppy political oversight, and culpable procrastination, all leading to a colossal waste of public money. This book will…
Peter Sutherland was a brave and highly competent Attorney General of Ireland, between 1981 and 1984, and also one of its youngest ever. He impressed civil servants and Ministers by his decisiveness and his grace under pressure, especially in dealing with difficult terrorist/extradition cases. Although his subsequent public and business career took him to live…
First Confession: A Sort of Memoir by Chris Patten (Allen Lane, £14.99) I have just finished reading with very great interest this most absorbing memoir of a modern politician of a special kind. Chris Patten was a Minister in Margaret Thatcher’s and John Major’s governments, and was the Director of Elections for his party in the…