Neil Hegarty

Good and interesting survey of a few streets in London. Leans very heavily on Charles Booth's work but does have history to bring it up to the present day. Wished it did more from that angle though, kind of frustrating to have a good amount of detail from around 1900 and then just bits and pieces for the next 100 years... doesn't really fulfil its stated goal very well because of that. Could have done with more maps too because it was hard to place the streets in context. Also some weirdness with suggesting gentrification is wholly good. But overall, although it's not particularly detailed or academic, an interesting and easy to read look at some parts of London.… (altro)

An episodic history of Ireland, beginning with a brief prologue about pre-Christian Ireland, then covering:
1. The coming of Christianity to Ireland, which was then sent back into mainland Europe as learning was lost with the “Dark Ages” (although interesting, the biography of Columbanus in Europe felt out of place).
2. A little about the Irish kingdoms themselves. Perhaps there is little evidence of these, but other than Dal Riata (Scottish Isles and north Irish kingdom) and what became Ulster, there was too little about this.
3. The coming of the Viking, and how this was similar, but different from in England/Britain.
4. The coming of the Normans/Angevins, including the creation of the Pale, which was interesting as although I knew that this had happened, I did not know any detail.
5. The reformation, Cromwell (“By 1660 famine, fighting and disease had wiped out between a fifth and a quarter of the Irish population”) and protestant settlements, mainly Presbyterians from Scotland. I really had not understood how Ulster’s protestants were separate from English interests. Also the start of emigration, with Catholics emigrating to Europe (the “wild geese”).
6. The Act of Settlement (1652) – “an attempt at social engineering on a vast and revolutionary scale, dispossessing landowners in order to hand their estates over to newcomers; and it was underpinned by the hope that, in the end, the Irish would depart for good. The effect was the creation of the Ascendancy in Ireland: a Protestant class of five thousand-odd families that would control the lion’s share of the land – and this was the great shift that would dominate the country’s affairs for the next 270 years.” But then too little about the Ascendancy.
7. The Battle of the Boyne (1690) – “though it was certainly not the great decisive engagement of Irish myth, has provided one enduring image: that of William on a white charger, his vast force wholly outnumbering, outgunning and outflanking the Jacobites” (Catholics from various countries).
8. More emigration “The eighteenth century witnessed the first mass emigration in Irish history: between 1717 and 1776, a quarter of a million Presbyterians sailed from Belfast, Derry and the smaller ports of Ulster for a new life in North America. Some made for Canada, leaving a lasting imprint on the culture and politics of Ontario in particular; the majority, however, chose to settle in the United States, where they came to be known as the Scots-Irish.”
9. The potato famine (1845-49), a European wide blight, but “It was only in Ireland, however, that such a high proportion of the population was so utterly dependent on a single crop.” And the “Irish Question” – trying (unsuccessfully) to bring the Catholic majority into the administration of Ireland in the 19th century.
10. Moving to the late nineteenth and twentieth century there was useful explanations (to me) of the personalities and significance of Charles Stewart Parnell, Michael Collins and de Valera, the policies of Unionism and Nationalism, the Free State’s brief civil war, the impact of the Irish “diaspora” upon Irish politics and culture, the influence of the Catholic Church from the 1920’s onwards and neutrality during the second world war.
11. There are brief mentions of Irish culture once we reach the late nineteenth century, although the majority of this was produced by Irish emigrants. It was sad/interesting/appalling to read that “at the end of the 1920s, a massive 93 per cent of children were in receipt of no secondary education at all.”
12. With regard to the analysis of late twentieth century and later politics (in the Afterword), it is perhaps difficult to stand back from this with sufficient perspective, as it is still too close in time to be history, rather than memory. However, a brave attempt is made at providing an outline analysis without being partisan. Some of this was familiar to me from news reports from the 1970’s onwards and it was interesting to read about these events as history and from a southern Irish perspective
Perhaps inevitably, there is much about the relationship with England/Britain, as well as with other countries, especially Scotland and France. As noted above, there is too little about the indigenous Irish themselves and more about “immigrants”, especially for early periods.

Overall, despite some weaknesses, especially with pre-Christian Ireland, I have learnt much and the book is a good, readable introduction to Ireland’s history.… (altro)