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This site includes the postings from the Irish Aires email list. This includes a listing of Irish/Celtic events in the Houston area and other information that the Irish Aires radio program posts.
Tuesday, July 26, 2005
Read Ireland
Read Ireland Book News - Issue 312
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Throw in the Vowels: New and Selected Poems by Rita Ann Higgins
(Trade Paperback; 16.00 Euro / 18.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 224 pages)
Throw in the Vowels is a new retrospective from Rita Ann
Higgins: provocative and heart-warming poems of high jinx,
jittery grief and telling social comment by a gutsy, anarchic
chronicler of the Irish dispossessed.
‘A brilliantly spiky, surreal blend of humour and social issues.
Her poems are a witty mix of the erotic and the upfront
political from a female perspective, with wonderful rhythms that
effortlessly incorporate direct speech’ – Ruth Padel,
Independent on Sunday
‘A quite untameable poet. Higgins roams the provincial towns and
countryside of Ireland fomenting rebellion and writing with
unstaunchable energy of everything warm and unrespectable in
Irish life. Her voice is like nobody else’s, simple but not
naive, raucous but sympathetic’ – Peter Porter, PBS Bulletin
‘Higgins’s voices are so distinctive and real that a whole world
of semi-rural Irish poverty rises around the reader with the
jolting acuity of an excellent documentary…an hilarious,
absorbing and thoroughly disturbing experience’ – Kate Clanchy,
Independent
‘Rita Ann Higgins means a unique line in human warmth; and a
unique colour of humour and a unique clarity’ – Paul Durcan
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The Eternal Paddy: Irish Identity and the British Press,
1798-1882 by Michael de Nie
(Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 25.00 USD / 15.00 UK; 320 pages)
In The Eternal Paddy, Michael de Nie examines anti-Irish
prejudice, Anglo-Irish relations, and the construction of Irish
and British identities in nineteenth-century Britain. This book
provides a new, more inclusive approach to the study of Irish
identity as perceived by Britons and demonstrates that ideas of
race were inextricably connected with class concerns and
religious prejudice in popular views of both peoples. De Nie
suggests that while traditional anti-Irish stereotypes were
fundamental to British views of Ireland, equally important were
a collection of sympathetic discourses and a self-awareness of
British prejudice. In the pages of the British newspaper press,
this dialogue created a deep ambivalence about the Irish people,
an ambivalence that allowed most Britons to assume that the root
of Ireland's difficulties lay in its Irishness.
Drawing on more than ninety newspapers published in England,
Scotland, and Wales, The Eternal Paddy offers the first major
detailed analysis of British press coverage of Ireland over the
course of the nineteenth century. This book traces the evolution
of popular understandings and proposed solutions to the "Irish
question," focusing particularly on the interrelationship
between the press, the public, and the politicians. The work
also engages with ongoing studies of imperialism and British
identity, exploring the role of Catholic Ireland in British
perceptions of their own identity and their empire.
-----------------------------------
A Doctor’s War by Aidan MacCarthy
(Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 160 pages)
Researching McCarthy’s Bar Pete McCarthy entered MacCarthy’s Bar
in Castletownbere, west Cork. While there Adrienne MacCarthy
gave him a copy of her father’s wartime memoir. Pete found it
‘unputdownable’. An RAF medical officer, Aidan served in France,
survived Dunkirk, and was plunged into adventures in the Far
East. In 1944, en route to the Japanese mainland, his ship was
torpedoed but a Japanese whaling boat picked him up and he was
re-interned on the mainland. In Nagasaki his life was literally
saved by the dropping of the atomic bomb and he was an
eyewitness to the horror and devastation it caused. Finally, he
cruised home on board the Queen Mary.
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New From Colourpoint Books:
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Passing Through: The 82nd Airborne Division in Northern Ireland
1943-44 by John P. McCann
(Trade Paperback; 14.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 128 pages,
with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout)
On 9 December 1943 the first men of the United States 82nd
Airborne Division set foot on Northern Irish soil. By the end of
that day 12,000 of them had been disembarked from their ships
and were being transported to camps throughout the Province. By
March the following year, however, they had all moved on again,
to England and something bigger - the final preparations for
the invasion of Europe.
As a child growing up in the small County Derry town of
Castledawson, John McCann uncovered many ‘treasures’ in the
family garden - an occasional tin can, the odd leather boot, an
embossed button, a large buckle, the odd glass bottle, a few
cooking pots of various sizes and bullets, yes bullets! These
discoveries led him, in later years, to question their source
and this book is the result of that questioning and four years
hard research.
In these pages John looks not just at the 82nd’s short stay in
Northern Ireland but also its service in North Africa, Sicily
and Italy and later the missions in France, Holland, Belgium and
Germany beginning with D-Day on 6 June 1944, all told using the
reminiscences of the men who proudly served with the 82nd
Airborne Division.
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The Steam Age in Ireland: A Collection of Railway Art by The
Lord O’Neill
(Hardback; 45.00 Euro / 55.00 USD / 30.00 UK; 128 pages with
full-colour and illustrations throughout)
Few things are more evocative of a bygone era than a
well-executed painting. The Steam Age in Ireland depicts the
golden age of railway travel, bringing to life a period when
most photographers used black and white film and when colour
pictures were rare.
Using art as a medium of communication allows us to play out our
fantasies, creating scenes as we imagine them to have been.
Between the covers of this book you will see many different
styles and interpretations. Most of the artists are
contemporary; most of the paintings are commissions - some for
book covers, some for posters but the majority for private
individuals who, for their own enjoyment, want a particular
scene to be immortalised in a painting.
These pictures allow us to recapture the trains of our youth,
when, as well as passengers, the country railway conveyed
cattle, coal, racing pigeons, letters and milk churns.
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Citybus: Belfast’s Buses 1973-1988 by Will Hughes
(Trade Paperback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 18.00 UK; 180 pages,
with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout)
In this long-awaited addition to the Buses in Ulster series,
Will Hughes looks at Belfast's red buses from the takeover in
1973 to the retirement of Managing Director Werner Heubeck in
1988.
This was a difficult period for the new company, with many
vehicles maliciously destroyed and passenger numbers in decline.
It was, however, a time of much interest to the enthusiast with
numerous vehicles acquired second-hand from operators throughout
England - Daimler Fleetlines from Potteries Motor Traction and
Northern General, AEC Merlins and Swifts from London and Eastern
Coach Works-bodied Bristol REs from various National Bus Company
subsidiaries.
All of the types of vehicles operated are illustrated, as are
some of the people who worked on them. Interesting asides are
the sections on preserved former Citybus vehicles and those
buses which operated in the city during the period covered and
then moved 'Beyond Belfast'.
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Car Ferries of the Irish Sea 1954-2004 by Justin Merrigan
(Trade Paperback; 20.50 Euro / 25.00 UK / 16.00 UK; 168 pages,
with full-colour and black-and-white illustrations throughout)
At the Court of Inquiry into the loss of the Princess Victoria
on 31 January 1953 it was declared that as the ship was, to some
degree, experimental her owners should have kept a closer eye on
the design and construction. Ship design has changed
dramatically over the last fifty years and on the Irish Sea in
2004 we have the giant 208 metre long Ulysses, with capacity for
1875 passengers and 1342 cars and the Stena HSS ships, which are
capable of more than 40 knots.
In the pages of this book Justin Merrigan looks at the story of
the Irish Sea car ferry since 1954. His research has uncovered
much information and every ship is illustrated. Ro/Ro freight
ships are outside the boundaries of this title, but as RoPax
vessels are the modern day development of the freight vessel and
passenger car ferry he has included a considerable number of
these important ships, with passenger certificates in excess of
200 persons, which have appeared in these waters.
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New from Devenish Press:
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Mystical Landscapes: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn
Kumpf
(28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK)
This ancient land of misty hollows and humid light has been
shaped by the forces of nature and the hand of man from the
highest of the windswept highlands to the rain-blasted cliffs
and strands of the coastline. (28 color images.)
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Misty Places and Tranquil Light: Irish Images – Photographs by
Tom Quinn Kumpf
(28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK)
Ireland is known as the Emerald Isle, a paradise of green, a
place of rich and robust color. It is also a land of line, form,
and constantly changing light. This makes it an ideal place to
explore, slowly and intentionally, in black and white.(28 B&W
images.)
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The Burren: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn Kumpf
(28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK)
The Burren is an amazing expanse of limestone cliffs and
plateaus in northwest County Clare. Lacking the lush greens
which so distinguish Ireland, the grey limestone pavements often
shock the first-time visitor with their severity and starkness.
But the Burren is far from just the stony place its ancient name
implies, and a closer look reveals a landscape full of life and
vitality.(28 color images.)
------------------------------
Embracing the Magic: Irish Images – Photographs by Tom Quinn
Kumpf
(28 Postcards; 6.00 Euro / 9.50 USD / 4.50 UK)
From the eerie starkness of the Burren highlands to the
rain-lashed cliffs and strands of the coastline, Ireland speaks
of strength, of resonance, of life. Every square inch of Irish
turf has been pressed flat by the tread of a human foot. Every
mountain and lough has been host to a hero, every new scene
draws the soul to another, and in Ireland especially, every
place name is linked to some special character or event in the
past. (28 B&W images.)
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Highlights from Issue 311
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Field Day Review 2005 edited by Seamus Deane and Breandan Mac
Suibhne
(Large Format Paperback; 35.00 Euro / 42.50 USD / 28.00 UK; 300
pages)
This first issue of Field Day Review appears twenty-five years
after the establishment of the Field Day Theatre Company by
Brian Friel and Stephen Rea. Field Day has toured fourteen plays
including world premières of celebrated works by Friel, Terry
Eagleton, Thomas Kilroy, Derek Mahon, Stewart Parker and Tom
Paulin. Field Day has also held many readings and lectures and
has published some forty books including the fifteen Field Day
Pamphlets (1983–88), Seamus Heaney’s Sweeney Astray, the
five-volume Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, and Critical
Conditions (1995–2005), a series of sixteen books of essays by
literary critics, historians and geographers.
-------------------------------
Towards Ireland Free: The West Cork Brigade in the War of
Independence 1917-21 by Liam Deasy
(Trade Paperback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 14.00 UK; 366 pages)
In the War of Independence, military leaders such as Michael
Collins, Liam Lynch and Liam Deasy secured Irish independence
from a country that had seemingly limitless resources of men,
money and arms. The British, however, lacked the one thing which
the Irish possessed in abundance: a burning conviction in the
justice of their cause. First published in 1973, this book is
the story of one of those leaders. Liam Deasy was just 20 at the
time of the 1916 Easter Rising. He enrolled in the Volunteers in
Bandon in 1917 and by 1921 was in command of the West Cork
Brigade. In this account, he vividly recreates the tense and
hope-filled atmosphere of those years and provides a rich
gallery of portraits of those in the company of whom he fought.
He also recounts, in great detail, famous episodes such as the
successful attack on the British Naval Sloop in Bantry, Howes
Strand and Ballycrovane Coastguard Stations, the ambushes at
Kilmichael and Cross barry and the raid on Fastnet Rock.
---------------------------------
The Sea by John Banville
(Hardback; 20.00 Euro / 26.00 USD / 14.00 UK; 264 pages)
The brilliant new novel by the Booker-shortlisted author of
Shroud and The Book of Evidence, John Banville is, quite simply,
one of the greatest novelists writing in the English language
today. When Max Morden returns to the coastal town where he
spent a holiday in his youth he is both escaping from a recent
loss and confronting a distant trauma. The Grace family appear
that long ago summer as if from another world. Drawn to the
Grace twins, Chloe and Myles, Max soon finds himself entangled
in their lives, which are as seductive as they are unsettling.
What ensues will haunt him for the rest of his years and shape
everything that is to follow. John Banville is one of the most
sublime writers working in the English language. Utterly
compelling, profoundly moving and illuminating, The Sea is quite
possibly the best thing he has ever written.
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Sheela-Na-Gigs: Unravelling an Enigma by Barbara Freitag
(Paperback; 35.00 Euro / 45.00 USD / 25.00 UK; 210 pages)
An air of mystery has surrounded the crude carvings of naked
females, called Sheela-na-gigs, since their scholarly discovery
some one hundred and sixty years ago. Especially puzzling is the
fact that they occur predominantly in medieval religious
buildings. High-minded clergymen have since defaced or destroyed
many of these carvings, and for a long time archaeologists
dismissed them as rude and repulsive.
Only in the less puritanical atmosphere of the last few decades
have academics and artists turned their interest to
Sheela-na-gigs. Divergent views emerged: some see them as
ancient goddesses, some as vestiges of a pagan cult, others as
protective talismans or Christian warnings against lust. Here
Barbara Freitag examines all the literature on the subject,
highlighting the inconsistencies of the various interpretations
in regard to origin, function and name. By considering the
Sheela-na-gigs in their medieval social context, she suggests
that they were folk deities with particular responsibility for
assistance in childbirth.
This fascinating survey sheds new light on this controversial
phenomenon, and also contains a complete catalogue of all known
Sheela-na-gigs, including hitherto unrecorded or unpublished
figures.
---------------------------------------
Early Celtic Art in Britain and Ireland by Ruth and Vincent
Megaw
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 80 pages)
This widely praised introduction, now extensively revised and
enlarged, examines the predominantly warrior and aristocraftic
art of the Iron Age inhabitants of Britain and Ireland from the
fourth century BC until the Roman conquest. Since these
communities, conventionally referred to as Celts, were peoples
with an oral tradition, medieval Irish and Welsh texts embodying
these traditions are a very uncertain guide to the life and
culture of peoples of upwards of a millennium earlier. Celtic
art is thus one of the rare, if obscured, windows into the minds
and souls of early Celts. Much of the surviving art decorates
metalwork, usually weapons or items of personal adornment; there
is little or no securely dated sculpture, whether in stone or
wood. This is an art style whose imagery is elusive,
non-representational and non-narrative, and thus difficult to
analyse. This book looks at Celtic art made by communities who
lived in Britain and Ireland a thousand years and more before
the creation of the Book of Kells or the Ardagh Chalice, the art
which is more popularly known as 'Celtic'.
------------------------------------
Prehistoric Stone Circles by Aubrey Burl
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 80 pages)
Stone circles have excited the imagination of their visitors
ever since the time of John Aubrey, the seventeenth century
antiquarian who was the first person to study them seriously.
For three hundred years archaeologists, astronomers and
anthropologists have aruged about the purpose of these abandoned
rings. Modern excavations have showsn that the earliest circles
were erected over five thousand tyears ago and that often
sightlines were built into them towards the sun or moon. This
book describes these rings, including Stonehenge, explains their
history and the facts known about them, and shows how we are
gradually coming to an understanding of the significance these
gaunt, grey circles had to their builders.
----------------------------------
Prehistoric Astronomy and Ritual by Aubrey Burl
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 80 pages)
Stonehenge was not an observatory used by druidical
astronomer-priests. It was, instead, a monument in which the
moon and the sun and the dead were joined together. In this book
the author, a well-known archaeologist, explains how people in
the British Isles, four thousand or more years ago, identified
life and death with the cycle of midwinter and midsummer and
with the risings and settings of the sun and moon. The book
describes how astronomical customs developed in the British
Isles. Unlike other works about ‘megalithic astronomy’,
technical explanations about azimuths and declinations are kept
to their simplest. The emphasis here is upon people rather than
perturbations and eclipses.
---------------------------
Searching for Home by Mary Stanley
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 374 pages)
Losing their parents in a freak war-time plane crash, Amelia and
her fiercely angry, bereaved older sister are rescued by their
aunt Lucy, and their grandparents, a wonderfully eccentric
British couple from colonial India, who are also scarred by the
war. Moving from 1940s Ireland, through post-war England, Malta
and London in the 1960s and 1970s, Mary Stanley’s new novel is a
beautifully observant tale about survival, self-discovery and
falling in love.
-----------------------------------
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