You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
'Technically this book is a masterly achievement: the collection, sorting, selecting and balancing of material has meant an immense amount of hard and highly skilful work. The presentation is not only learned but cool, objective, unimpassioned and yet almost always alive and compassionate as well . . . As a reference book alone it is immensely valuable . . . As an example of a humane, scholarly, expert history, Professor Beckett's book will be difficult to surpass.' D. B. Quinn, Belfast Telegraph '[He] has brilliantly succeeded. The book is admirably constructed and written with clarity and economy which carry the narrative unflaggingly through to the end . . . This excellent book supersedes all previous histories of modern Ireland.' F. S. L. Lyons, New Statesman
This detailed study -- the first to appear for over fifty years -- traces the course of a critical period of Irish history: from the accession of James II to the surrender of Limerick, which made William of Orange master of the whole country. It takes the story from the Catholic revival that followed the accession of James II to the treaty of Limerick, which led to a century of Protestant ascendancy and penal laws. Much of the book is concerned with 'the war of the two kings', which coincided with a struggle for power between the Protestant settlers and the older inhabitants who were Catholic. The siege of Derry and the battle of Boyne are still commemorated, and Dr Simms shows how the tensions of modern Ulster have their origins in the seventeenth century. Considerable attention is paid to the European implications of the conflict, which is shown as part of the contest between Louis XIV and the Grand Alliance. French, Danish and Dutch sources are used to illustrate the course of events in Ireland and, in addition to the military narrative, problems of religion, politics and landholding are discussed.
During the Jacobite war of 1689-91 James II had no more determined enemies than the Irish presbyterians. But when protestant ascendancy in Ireland was restored under William III, they found that the privileged position of the established church was to remain intact. To English statesmen of the period it seemed that the only essential division of Irish society was that of 'protestant or papist'. But in fact the sub-division of the protestant minority into churchmen and dissenters was in some respects more important. It was a political and social as well as a religious division; and it was one of the forces which stimulated emigration from Ulster to North America during the half century preceding the war of independence. This book is an attempt to explain why this division among protestants persisted in face of a hostile majority of Catholics, and to examine the extent to which the dissenters actually suffered under the penal laws directed against them.
This book explores the role of freemasonry in the Volunteer movement of the 1780s and in the struggles over Catholic emancipation, parliamentary reform, revolution and counter-revolution in the 1790s. Based on original research, the book addresses many common myths about the nature of early Irish freemasonry. It also explores the controversial relationship between masonry and Orangeism. The masonic lodge had many other roles besides secret rituals, convivial gatherings, and occasional political involvement. Lodges provided a measure of social security for the members, helpedÃ?Â?Ã?Â?emigrants integrate, enforced a code of respectable behaviour and arbitrated in disputes. Their public parades on St John's Day displayed masonic ceremonial rituals to the wider community. By 1800, there may have been as many as 20,000 freemasons in Ulster alone, many of them Catholics.
This is a study of some of Anglo-Ireland's most compelling twentieth-century attempts at self-representation. In contrast to formative studies that read Anglo-Irish fiction as a predictably colonialist literature that nostalgically champions ruling-class culture, the author argues that novels by such authors as Molly Keane, Elizabeth Bowen, and Samuel Beckett are in fact richly textured narratives that sustain continuous debates with their own visions and revisions of history and culture. The book contributes to the ongoing effort in Irish cultural studies to analyze myths and stereotypes that have been both symptom and cause of Irish troubles past and present, and helps destabilize problematically binary terminologies, toward which discourse about postcoloniality can tend. In the process, the author refines received ideas about literary modernism and post-modernism, and suggests failings in the prevailing theory and practice of ideology critique. Ellen M. Wolff is Eleanor Gwin Ellis Instructor in English at Phillips Exeter Academy.
Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669) is a key figure in the history of ideas, whose concepts have been seen as precursors to those developed by Spinoza, Malebranche, Leibniz and Kant. His Ethics presents a treatment of virtue from the standpoint of occasionalist metaphysics. The great Irish writer Samuel Beckett stated that Geulincx, with his emphasis on the powerlessness and ignorance of the human condition, was a key influence on his works. This is the first complete version of the text to appear in a modern language. It includes the full text of the Ethics and Beckett’s notes to his reading of Geulincx. Shedding new light on important moments of intellectual history, it is a major event for students of philosophy and literature. Brill's Texts and Sources in Intellectual History, vol. 1
They are two of twentieth-century history’s most significant figures, yet today they are largely forgotten – Paul von Hindenburg and Erich Ludendorff, Germany’s First World War leaders. Although defeat in 1918 brought an end to their ‘silent dictatorship’, both generals played a key role in the turbulent politics of the Weimar Republic and the rise of the Nazis. Alexander Clifford, in this perceptive reassessment of their political careers, questions the popular image of these generals in the English-speaking world as honourable ‘Good Germans’. For they were intensely political men, whose ideas and actions shaped the new Germany and ultimately led to Hitler’s dictatorship. Th...
An eminent, ageing writer is invited to contribute to a book entitled 'Strong Opinions'. It is a chance to air some urgent concerns. He offers the job of typing up his manuscript to an alluring young woman he meets in the laundry-room of his apartment block. However, her boyfriend has reservations about her taking the job.