Irish History Bookshop: Prehistory to Modern Times.

Dark Island

For centuries Ireland suffered from its position on the vulnerable western approaches to its more powerful neighbour. When disaffected Norman-Welsh marcher lords, seeking independence from the English throne, were invited into Ireland, Henry II saw a real or imagined threat that prompted invasion and piecemeal colonisation. Norman enclaves expanded in uneasy proximity to warring chiefdoms. Native uprisings alternated with opportunist coalitions. The growing Norman-Irish power base was regarded with unease by successive occupiers of a precarious English throne, through centuries of turbulence when the Irish aligned themselves with one competing faction or another.

Later, and equally threatening, was the existence of a Catholic population within striking distance of a Protestant state in frequent conflict with European Catholic interests. Plantations of Scottish and English protestants by Tudors, Stuarts and under Cromwell’s Commonwealth were the seeds of the sectarianism that persists to the present day. Irish alliances with England’s enemies brought urgent, and often brutal, retaliation. For over a millennium the histories of the two islands have been tragically intertwined, and other titles on our England and Medieval pages deal with different aspects of the troubled relationship.

The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland / Ed. Roy Foster

A substantial work by a team of respected modern Irish historians that gives a synthesis of Irish history from prehistory to modern politics. The book goes beyond the received wisdom and explores the micro-politics of Irish society and its responses to change down the centuries.

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A History of Ireland / Edmund Curtis
From prehistory to the Treaty of 1922. First published in 1936, this work is still a solid and well-regarded comprehensive study of Irish history.

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Modern Ireland, 1600-1972 / R F Foster

A well written and comprehensive work that covers the turbulent course of Irish history from the end of the Tudor period to the latter half of the 20th century.

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Green Flag: A History of Irish Nationalism / Robert Kee

A guide through the complexities of nationalist movements and their causes. From the Protestant Plantations in the north, the abortive invasion of James II and the Battle of the Boyne, to Robert Emmett and Wolfe Tone, the Fenian movement and Irish Republican Brotherhood, and finally the Easter Rising, Treaty and the Irish Free State.

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The Easter Rising: Revolution and Irish Nationalism / Alan J Ward

This recent work takes the Easter Rising of 1916 as the pivotal event from which to review Irish history from the 12th century to the present day. The author examines the varied (and sometimes conflicting) nationalist movements and their residual influences on modern Ireland, down to the post 1960s troubles in Northern Ireland and the attempts at a political solution.

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The Great Hunger: Ireland, 1845-49 / Cecil Woodham-Smith

The tragedy of the potato famine and its effects on Ireland, England and the USA. Potato blight was endemic throughout Europe during the early-mid 19th century, but rural Ireland was especially vulnerable because of an exploding population, its traditions of land tenure and its consequent dependence on monoculture; to which should be added the burgeoning cult of market forces and cash crop economics that saw staples exported while the people starved. The tragedy was exacerbated by the actions of native and absentee landlords, and by the inability of the British government to respond adequately to a catastrophe of unprecedented scale. The result was a massive emigration to the USA and British overseas dominions, and a folk memory of almost mythological status that has contaminated Irish relations with Britain ever since. But the Hunger led to the repeal of the Corn Laws, brought the Poor Laws under review, and created one of the first programmes of public works (however futile and ineffectual) designed for the relief of an impoverished population. And the Society of Friends achieved miracles of aid that will never be forgotten by the Irish people.

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Charles Trevelyan and the Great Irish Famine / Robin Haines

The Assistant Secretary to the Treasury has been demonised by many authors and political figures for his allegedly inadequate response to the Irish Famine of the 1840s. This volume is a critique of the critics and questions the conventional wisdom that Trevelyan was a parsimonious anti-Irish bigot who deliberately prevented aid from reaching Ireland, in furtherance of a policy of depopulation and ’progress’, and the Anglicisation of Irish society.

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The Shaping of Modern Ireland / Ed. Connor Cruise O’Brien
Series of character sketches based on the Thomas Davis Lectures that were broadcast by Radio Eireann in 1955-56. Covering personalities who were influential between the fall of Parnell and the Easter Rising.

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Michael Collins: A Life / James Mackay
Comprehensive biography of the man who stood behind Patrick Pearce at the General Post Office, who was a negotiator and signatory of the 1922 Treaty and who became the Head and Commander-in-Chief of the Free State. Betrayal and Civil War were to follow - midgets snapping at the heels of giants. Neil Jordan’s film Michael Collins (1996) is available from our Film Store.

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As I Was Going Down Sackville Street / Oliver St. John Gogarty
A reminiscence of Dublin in the 1920s from the surgeon and writer who was the friend of Yeats, AE and other literary luminaries. Includes personal experiences of the Irish Civil War.

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Autobiographies / W B Yeats
W.B. Yeats was a driving force of the ‘Irish Literary Renaissance’ from the latter part of the 19th century well into the 20th. He was also involved with the political movements of the times, and his Autobiographies contain his personal views on the events and personalities that led to the creation of the Irish Republic. But there is much more besides.

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W.B. Yeats: A Life / Stephen Coote
There is a substantial industry based on Yeats’s life and the critical analysis of his work. No examination of the poet can ignore the republican influences and his part in a crucial period of modern Irish history. This fairly recent biography was published in 1997.

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