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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.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Read Ireland
Special Readers Offer: Bantry Studio Publications have
generously offered 5 copies of their new book, The Castles of
County Limerick by Michael j. Carroll, to Read Ireland
customers. Please send your name and full mailing address in an
email to me, with a reason why you should ‘win a copy’ of this
book. Here is some information on the book:
This book is a companion volume to the author’s ‘The Castles and
Fortified Houses of West Cork’ and ‘The Castles of the Kingdom
of Kerry’ (both available to purchase from Read Ireland). Major
historical sources have differed as to the number of castles and
fortified houses that existed in County Limerick, with figures
ranging from 100 to 400 being given at various times. Taking
the period of castle building from around 1200 to 1700, this
book mentions over 140 castles. Each entry includes a map
reference and a brief description of position and remains, and
in many cases the history and traditions surrounding the castle
are explored in depth. There is also a substantial introduction
dealing with the history of County Limerick in the medieval
period that provides a context for the discussion of the
individual castles.
----------------------------------
Read Ireland Book News – Issue 323
----------------------------------
Memoir by John McGahern
(Hardback; 23.00 Euro / 28.00 USD / 16.00 UK; 280 pages)
This is the story of John McGahern's childhood; of his mother's
death, his father's anger and bafflement, and his own discovery
of literature and his ambition to become a writer. At the heart
of the book is an unembarrassed homage by a loving son to a
woman who protected him and his sisters from his father's
unpredictable moods. His memory of walks with her in the lanes
near their rural home, of her naming flowers for him and of his
joy in her presence, is recovered with great lyrical tact. The
account of her courageous endurance of illness - with almost no
support from her policeman husband, who was living in his
barracks - is unsentimental and unforgettable. The day their
mother died, the children were carted off to the barracks where
their father the sergeant ruled over a few guards and a quiet
countryside where crime was almost unknown, during the war years
when Ireland was cut off from the outside world. McGahern
describes an adolescence dancing attendance on a secretive,
brutal and mercurial man who had only spasms of affection to
give his bereft children. Often he reasoned with them by using
his fists. McGahern's description of the fields and quiet roads
of Co Leitrim, one of Ireland's least known counties, catches
the subtle beauties of an often poor landscape of hill and bog.
The memoir is also a great portrait of Ireland in the 1940s and
50s, a time of frugal comfort but also of low expectation and
depression for many people in a country that seemed to have no
future. The author barely escaped being removed from school to
do menial work through his discovery of books in the library of
a friendly, eccentric neighbour. He found his way to the life of
the mind, and a dream that he could himself write stories in
which language and feeling mattered as much as the form of the
tale. This memoir includes McGahern's memories of Dublin in the
1960s, his time as a schoolteacher, and his sacking for writing
a banned book (his second novel, "The Dark"). It ends with his
return to live in Leitrim with his wife and the death of his
father, difficult to the last.
---------------------------------------
The Politics of the Irish Civil War by Bill Kissane
(Hardback; 60.00 Euro / 75.00 USD / 40.00 UK)
Based on extensive archival research this book situates the
Irish civil war in the general process of decolonization in the
twentieth century, and explains why divisions over the
Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 proved so formative in the
development of the Irish state. Each chapter is devoted to a
particular aspect of the war and many new areas are explored.
These include the role the doctrine of self-determination played
in the Sinn Fein movement, the fate of numerous peace
initiatives, the power struggle between de Valera and Liam Lynch
within the IRA, and the impact of the civil war on the wider
civil society. The last three chapters explore how the conflict
has been interpreted by the actors themselves, as well as by
historians. Combining perspectives drawn from history and
politics, this book will interest not only students of Irish
history, but also those interested in the comparative study of
civil wars.
--------------------------------------
Irish Book of Death and Flying Ships: From the Chronicles of
Ancient Ireland
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 160 pages, with
illustrations throughout)
Extracted from a table of cosmical phenomena, epizootics,
famines and pestilences in Ireland (included in The Census of
Ireland for the Year 1851), the monastic and other annals quoted
here cover the earliest time to which tradition refers (as
transmitted by the bards) and up to the end of the 11th century
AD. The history of the early plagues shows that people tried to
account for sudden outbursts of disease, either by the direct
and miraculous interposition of Providence, or by some peculiar
atmospheric condition. Published to accompany the Irish Census
of 1851, this specially photo-illustrated edition provides a
beautiful history of Celtic Ireland.
------------------------------------
Illustrated History of Ireland: From 400 A.D. to 1800 A.D. by
C.F. Cusack
(Hardback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 670 pages)
With evocative black and white drawings, this is a thorough yet
accessible history of Ireland, written in 1868 and featuring the
famous and infamous inhabitants and events of Ireland.
---------------------------------------
Siege at Jadotville: The Irish Army’s Forgotten Battle by Declan
Power
(Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 18.00 USD / 9.00 UK; 300 pages)
During the course of operations, a company of Irish troops was
deployed to protect the inhabitants of the village of
Jadotville. Not long after deployment, the troops found
themselves heavily out-numbered and engaged in a pitched battle
with native Congolese soldiers led by white mercenary officers.
In addition to the overwhelming odds, the Irish also had to
contend with being strafed by a jet and had no airpower or
anti-aircraft defences to defend themselves.
Appeals for re-supply from UN forces were to no avail. There
were a number of attempts by Irish troops in the vicinity to
mount a relief operation for their surrounded comrades. However,
a mixture of superior fire, physical obstacles and political
machinations within the UN led to abject failure. But after
numerous rescue attempts failed and the Irish had fought to
their last rounds of ammunition and were already using bayonets
in hand-to-hand-fighting, Comdt Quinlan decided against the
needless bloodshed of his men and surrendered.
--------------------------------------
Kitty O’Shea: An Irish Affair by Jane Jordan
(Hardback; 25.00 Euro / 30.00 USD / 20.00 UK; 277 pages)
Kitty O'Shea (1846-1921) was at the centre of one of the most
notorious scandals of the late Victorian Age - a scandal which
brought the downfall of Charles Stewart Parnell, the leader of
the movement for Home Rule for Ireland and crippling damage to
the movement itself. In 1889, Parnell was named co-respondent in
a divorce suit brought by one of his own MPs, Captain Willie
O'Shea. Alleged to have conducted an ten-year affair with Mrs
Katherine O'Shea, Parnell was also revealed to be the father of
the three youngest O'Shea children. The divorce and the details
it exposed was a great public scandal in Victorian England and
Catholic Ireland. Yet Parnell refused to resign from his
leadership of the Home Rule movement, which resulted in the
split of his party. In this compelling new biography, Jane
Jordan explores the central, still unanswered questions:Why did
Parnell risk the political future of Ireland (and his own) in
conducting an affair with a married woman? And was O'Shea a
duped husband, as he maintained, or did he connive with his
wife's adultery in order to further his own political career?
-------------------------------------
Till Death Do Us Part by Siobhan Gaffney
(Paperback; 11.00 Euro / 14.00 USD / 8.00 UK; 200 pages)
Colin Whelan and Mary Gough appeared to be like any young,
married couple. They had been sweethearts and Colin won Mary's
heart a few years before their wedding.
The couple had been married just six months when Whelan called
an ambulance saying his wife was badly injured as a result of
falling down the stairs in the family home in Balbriggan, in
north Co. Dublin. A post-mortem, however, established that she
had been strangled. Whelan was charged with his wife’s murder in
April 2001 but he disappeared while on bail in March 2003 before
the trial began. He was thought to have taken his own life after
his Peugeot 206 and a number of personal possessions were found
near the sea at Howth’s Head in Co Dublin. A major sea, land and
air search was carried out but his body was never found.
About 15 months later an Irish holidaymaker in Majorca
recognised Whelan working in a bar and alerted the authorities.
This is the true story of what happened. Court reporter, Siobhan
Gaffney, explores the homicidal tendencies of Colin Whelan,
which emerged before he even wed his young wife.
-----------------------------------
Ventry Calling by Bearnard O Lobhaing
(Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 128 pages)
Ventry Calling is a translation of Bearnard O Lubhaing's Ceann
Tra hAon - a memoir originally published in 1998 by Coisceim and
now translated by Gabriel Fitzmaurice. Ventry was a parish of
two religions, Catholic and Protestant, which learned to live
together. O Lubhaing's account of the religious and educational
implications of this co-existence is carefully recalled. The
rich archaeological heritage of the area, the feast days of the
year, life in West Kerry during the Second World War, encounters
with the Blasket Island heritage, are all lovingly related in
this authoritative account by a Ventry native who went on to
become a national school teacher, a member of An Taisce and a
committed Gaelgeoir.
-------------------------------------
Childhood Interrupted: Growing Up Under the Cruel Regime of the
Sisters of Mercy by Kathleen O’Malley
(Large Format Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 17.50 USD / 10.00 UK; 244
pages)
In 1950, Kathleen O'Malley and her two sisters were legally
abducted from their mother and placed in an industrial school
ran by the Sisters of Mercy order of nuns, who also ran the
notorious Magdalene Homes. The rape of eight-year-old Kathleen
by a neighbour had triggered their removal - the Irish
authorities ruling that her mother must have been negligent.
They were only allowed a strictly supervised visit once a year,
until they were permitted to leave the harsh and cruel regime of
the institution at the age of sixteen. But Kate survived her
traumatic childhood and escaped her past by leaving for England
and then Australia when the British government offered a scheme
to encourage settlement there. Fleeing her past again, Kate
worked as a governess in Paris and then returned to England
where she trained as a beautician at Elizabeth Arden. She
married and had a son. A turning point in Kate's life came when
she applied to become a magistrate and realised that she had to
confront her hidden personal history and make it public. This is
her inspiring story.
----------------
Available Again:
----------------
Collected Poems of Patrick Kavanagh
(Paperback; 14.00 Euro / 19.00 USD / 11.00 UK; 300 pages)
The centenary of Patrick Kavanagh's birth in 2004 provides the
ideal opportunity to reappraise one of modern Ireland's greatest
poets. From a harsh, humble background that he himself described
so brilliantly, Kavanagh burst through immense constraints to
redefine Irish poetry - a poetry appropriate for a fully
independent country, both politically and culturally. Moving
beyond Irish verse's preoccupation with history, national
politics and identity, he turned to the land and scenery of his
native Inniskeen, portraying the closely-observed minutiae of
everyday rural and urban life in an uninhibited, groundbreaking
style. Lucid, various, direct and engaging, Kavanagh's poems
have a unique place in the canon and a unique accessibility.
This major new edition is the culmination of many years of work
by Antoinette Quinn in creating authoritative texts for
Kavanagh's poetry - from his early works such as Inniskeen Road:
July Evening' to his masterpiece, the epic The Great Hunger',
allowing us to see the development of Kavanagh's genius as never
before.
-------------------------------------
Highlights from the Previous Issue:
-------------------------------------
Shipbuilding in Waterford, 1820-1882 by Bill Irish
(Large Format Paperback; 40.00 Euro / 50.00 USD / 30.00 UK; 270
pages, with black-and-white illustrations throughout)
Bill Irish’s story of the Waterford shipyards highlights the
role of Quakers as entrepreneurs, and particularly as
risk-takers, who were willing to fund new enterprises, providing
rare economic relief to underdeveloped areas without the
guarantee of a good return on their investment—a rarity in
Ireland, and a glimpse or reminder of what might have been.
Their shipbuilding ventures in Waterford were as technologically
advanced as any similar development of the day, and they
certainly primed and brought to fruition the industrial
revolution on the banks of the Suir. Shipbuilding in Waterford
is illustrated with a large range of line etchings, lithographs,
oil paintings, photographs, movie stills and video images, which
on their own would constitute an invaluable historical record;
coupled with the meticulously researched text, they make the
book an important addition to our understanding of Ireland’s
industrial and cultural history.
-------------------------------
James Connolly: A Full Live by Donal Nevin
(Hardback; 30.00 Euro / 36.00 USD / 24.00 UK; 850 pages)
'Hasn't it been a full life, Lillie, and isn't this a good
end?', were James Connolly's last words to his wife in Dublin
Castle in the early hours of May 12, 1916 shortly before his
execution in Kilmainham Jail. The first fourteen years of
Connolly's life were spent in Edinburgh and the next seven years
in the King's Liverpool Regiment in Ireland. In 1889, he
returned to Edinburgh where he was a socialist activist and
organiser for seven years. In 1896, at the age of 28, he was
invited to Dublin as socialist organiser, founding the Irish
Republican Socialist Party and editing "The Workers' Republic".
During seven years in America between 1903 and 1910, Connolly
was in turn active with the Socialist Labor Party, organiser for
the IWW ('Wobblies') and a national organiser for the Socialist
Party of America. Returning to Ireland in 1910 as organiser of
the Socialist Party of Ireland, Connolly was appointed Ulster
Organiser of the Irish Transport and General Workers' Union by
James Larkin, succeeding him as acting general secretary in
October 1914. As Commander of the Irish Citizen Army, Connolly
joined with leaders of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in the
Easter Rising in 1916, becoming Commandant-General of the Dublin
Division of the Army of the Republic and Vice-President of the
Provisional Government of the Irish Republic.
-----------------------------------------
Nationalism and the Irish Party: Provincial Ireland 1910-1916 by
Michael Wheatley
(Hardback; 75.00 Euro / 90.00 USD / 50.00 UK; 295 pages)
John Redmond's constitutional, parliamentary, Irish Party went
from dominating Irish politics to oblivion in just four years
from 1914-1918. The goal of limited Home Rule, peacefully
achieved, appeared to die with it. Given the speed of the
party's collapse, its death has been seen as inevitable. Though
such views have been challenged, there has been no detailed
study of the Irish Party in the last years of union with
Britain, before the world war and the Easter Rising transformed
Irish politics. Through a study of five counties in provincial
Ireland - Leitrim, Longford, Roscommon, Sligo, and Westmeath -
that history has now been written. Far from being 'rotten', the
Irish Party was representative of nationalist opinion and still
capable of self-renewal and change. However, the Irish
nationalism at this time was also suffused with a fierce
anglophobia and sense of grievance, defined by its enemies,
which rapidly came to the fore, first in the Home Rule crisis
and then in the war. Redmond's project, the peaceful attainment
of Home Rule, simply could not be realised.
------------------------------------------
Balrothery Poor Law Union, County Dublin, 1839-1851 by Sinead
Collins
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages)
The Balrothery Poor Law Union served most of north Co. Dublin
which in the 1830s was a rural, agricultural area with almost no
industry. The main source of employment was an agricultural
labourers of whom there was an over-supply due to the continuing
growth in population and the transition among the large farmers
from tillage to grazing. The Poor Enquiry, established in 1833,
carried out an in-depth examination of the area and found there
much distress. Its findings are narrated. The establishment of
the union, the building of the workhouse and life in the
workhouse are described. The Famine years are dealt with in
detail. The efforts of the guardians and landlords to cope with
the crisis and the effects of the Famine years on the area are
also examined.
--------------------------------------
Smithfield and the Parish of St. Paul, Dublin, 1698-1750 by
Brendan Twomey
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages)
In the 1720s William Hendrick was the leading property developer
in the Smithfield area of Dublin. The civic administration of
the area at this time was largely within the jurisdiction of the
local Church of Ireland vestry of St Paul’s parish of which
Hendrick was a member. The book analyses the physical
development and the civic administration of Smithfield in the
first half of the 18th century. It also gives short biographies
of a number of the leading members of the local Protestant elite
in this period.
--------------------------------
The Liberty and Ormond Boys: Factional Riot in 18th Century
Dublin by James Kelly
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 64 pages)
This study of factional disorder sets the Liberty and Ormond
Boys in the contemporary context. The conditions necessary to
enable factions to develop and flourish in Dublin were in place
by the 1720s, when the city was sufficiently developed
physically and demographically to sustain the local and sectoral
identities that faction required. Nonetheless, the growth of
faction could not have taken place without the breakdown in the
authority of the guilds or in the absence of recreational
patterns that validated violence. Beginning with the emergence
of the Kevan Bail in 1729, the city was periodically racked over
the following sixty years by busts of violence as the contending
factions sought to establish which was dominant. As the best
known and most enduring, the interlinked histories of the Ormond
and Liberty Boys provide the centre piece of this book, but the
histories of a host of lesser known factions from all parts of
Dublin city and county are examined.
-----------------------------------
Love Life: Poems by Micheal O Siadhail
(Paperback; 13.00 Euro / 16.50 USD / 9.00 UK; 118 pages)
In "Love Life", one of our most thoughtful and accomplished
poets finds a fresh intensity and reach. In four sequences
Micheal O'Siadhail tells of a life in love moving through the
passionate erotic, the dramas of wooing, promising and
quarrelling and the day-by-day of home. The seasons of love
unfold - young love opening to intimacy, growth into commitment
and the slow transformations of life together. Throughout, the
core theme recurs: a lifetime's amazement at the mystery of one
woman. The book culminates in the subtleties and variations of
growing old while revelling in the love of life a deux.
---------------------------------------
Pieces of Me: A Life-in-Progress by Roisin Ingle
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 414 pages)
'The prospect of taking over the 'Regarding Ireland' column
scared me witless. If they'd changed the title to 'Regarding
Reality TV' or even 'Regarding Roisin', I might have been
slightly more enthusiastic. But only slightly ...' Despite her
initial reluctance, Roisin Ingle's weekly column in "The Irish
Times Magazine" has been enjoyed by thousands of readers over
the last three years. In her disarmingly open style - always
humorous, often deeply affecting - she muses on life, love and
everything in between. Collected together for the first time,
the columns are accompanied by new writing in which she reflects
on the death of her father, her failed marriage, her unlikely
path into journalism and her long-standing love affair with
Borza's fish and chips. From her self-destructive years to her
spiritual adventures to the summer she found love again in the
middle of a Portadown riot, she writes about the journey so far
with all the tenderness, humour and honesty her fans have come
to expect. "Pieces of Me" will stir, engage and delight readers
who will often find their lives reflected back through her pen.
---------------------------------------
Traditional Irish Embroidery: Mountmellick Work by Sandra
Counahan
(Large Format Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 18.00USD / 10.00 UK; 140
pages, with illustrations throughout)
This is a practical how-to book for beginners and skilled
embroiderers. It covers every aspect of Mountmellick Work,
using clear instructions, diagrams and photographs.
-------------------------------
Tom Barry: IRA Freedom Fighter by Meda Ryan
(Paperback; 15.00 Euro / 20.00 USD / 10.00 UK; 480 pages)
The story of Tom Barry's life, peppered by his battles with the
State and Church, and his constant endeavours to obtain an All
Ireland Republic makes him a unique and important figure of
Irish history. In 1949 when he addressed huge crowds in New
York, Chicago, Pittsburgh and Boston, his voice rang out - 'My
one aim is to unite the Irish people - one race...The Border
will not fade away, or the Partition will not be ended until
such time as the united strength is used in a supreme effort to
get rid of it.' It details his involvement on the fringes of the
Treaty negotiations; his Republican activities during the Civil
War; his engagement in the cease-fire/dump-arms deal of 1923;
his term as the IRA's Chief-of-Staff and his participation in
IRA conflicts in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s right up to his death
in 1980.
----------------------------------
Oh, Play That Thing by Roddy Doyle
(Paperback; 10.00 Euro / 13.00 USD / 7.00 UK; 376 pages)
It's 1924, and New York is the centre of the universe. Henry
Smart, on the run from Dublin, falls on his feet. He is a
handsome man with a sandwich board, behind which he stashes
hooch for the speakeasles of the Lower East Side. He catches the
attention of the mobsters who run the district and soon there
are eyes on his back and men in the shadows. It is time to
leave, for another America-Chicago is wild and new, and newest
of all is the music. Furious, wild, happy music played by a man
with a trumpet and bleeding lips called Louis Armstrong. His
music is everywhere, coming from every open door, every
phonograph. But Armstrong is a prisoner of his colour; there are
places a black man cannot go, things he cannot do. Armstrong
needs a man, a white man, and the man he chooses is Henry Smart.
---------------------------------------
Thank you for your continued support. It is vital for the
continuation of this service! I respectfully request that if you
are considering ordering any of these books that you
do so through Read Ireland. I very much appreciate your
patronage.
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