Yes, there has been a paucity of bold political leadership in Europe. However, in the almost four years since the onset of the international credit crunch, Ireland has managed only a number of baby-steps in the area of overdue structural…

In 1916 Revd JW Tristram summed up his early thoughts in the Church of Ireland’s Irish Church Quarterly in opposition to “The late Rebellion”: “When Irish people learn to rise early, tell the truth, use soap and water more freely,…

From the novel of manners to the crime novel of bad manners

Murphy shows little interest in or awareness of previous studies of the social context of the revolution, accepts the reality of the probably imaginary “Cairo Gang”, and utterly misrepresents the level of confidence of IRA leaders at the time of…

Emily’s self-seclusion was in the family tradition, as was her feeling of superiority, which she expressed in her inimitable manner. At a dinner during her visit to Boston, when presented with a flambé dessert she enquired from the judge sitting…

Just as the exiled Joyce carried his own flawed Ireland into exile with him and had then to devise his own means for imaginatively reinventing it, so O’Doherty carried with him an Ireland and found in the then radical movements…

The memory of Robert Emmet would remain venerated in the James family – Henry James Snr was adept at reciting the speech from the dock. But his novelist son had little sympathy for Ireland. When his sister’s diary was printed…

Clearly these iconic books resulted from intervention on the part of outsiders, who convinced islanders they had something of importance to say. This was consonant with the ideals of cultural romantic nationalism, whose impulse to recognise the richness and depth…

The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin’s Russia, by Orlando Figes, Allen Lane, 740pp, £25, ISBN: 978-0713997026 “I remember the grey wall of silent people who watched us walk towards the cart. No one moved or said anything … No one hugged us, or said a parting word; they were afraid of the soldiers, who walked…

The banks made supernormal profits and knew that if they ever got into trouble the taxpayer would bail them out. This was a wonderfully easy way of making big money. There were hardly any risks involved as far as bank…

The claims long made in Irish Republican circles of a shoot-to-kill policy are vigorously denied. Andrew states categorically: “There is no evidence in Security Service files that it countenanced or assisted a shoot-to-kill policy in Northern Ireland.” But does this…

The kaiser was a pioneer in the notion of using Turkey as a bridge between Europe and the Islamic world. The events chronicled in this book are not particularly encouraging, being more consistent with Dr Ian Paisley’s insight that the…