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A Nation and not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913–23
Packed with violence, political drama and social and cultural upheaval, the years 1913-1923 saw the emergence in Ireland of the Ulster Volunteer Force to resist Irish home rule and in response, the Irish Volunteers, who would later evolve into the IRA. World War One, the rise of Sinn Féin, intense Ulster unionism and conflict with Britain culminated in the Irish war of Independence, which ended with a compromise Treaty with Britain and then the enmities and drama of the Irish Civil War.
Drawing on an abundance of newly released archival material, witness statements and testimony from the ordinary Irish people who lived and fought through extraordinary times, A Nation and not a Rabble explores these revolutions. Diarmaid Ferriter highlights the gulf between rhetoric and reality in politics and violence, the role of women, the battle for material survival, the impact of key Irish unionist and republican leaders, as well as conflicts over health, land, religion, law and order, and welfare.
Drawing on an abundance of newly released archival material, witness statements and testimony from the ordinary Irish people who lived and fought through extraordinary times, A Nation and not a Rabble explores these revolutions. Diarmaid Ferriter highlights the gulf between rhetoric and reality in politics and violence, the role of women, the battle for material survival, the impact of key Irish unionist and republican leaders, as well as conflicts over health, land, religion, law and order, and welfare.
528 pages, Kindle Edition
First published September 1, 2015
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
January 1, 2016
I felt a little misled by this book's title. Was expecting more of a narrative history but got dense historiography. The historiography is interesting in and of itself and is well done. But it's not a book to pick up unless you're already quite familiar with the events and personalities and are looking for academic analysis. With the runup to the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising, I'm sure lots of folks will wind up picking this up expecting something different as well.
September 26, 2016
I guess I decided to read this book because it would advance my knowledge of the events of 1916 and the follow-on events of the war of independence and the civil war. Given the year that’s in it, with the anniversary of the 1916 uprising, it seemed appropriate. I had also last year done an online course focused on the decade, the lockout of 1913, the backdrop of the ‘Great war’, John Redmond etc. So I felt I had some reference points to begin with.
Perhaps I had too many misconceptions and I should have read the outline on the book cover better. Because what I found was a very dense book, littered with quotes from other publications. This annoyed me a lot at the outset, but I think I got used to them as the book went on. It was not an easy read, I suppose this was inevitable given the topic. But it did – eventually – help me to make sense of some of the events of the period covered.
I think what I enjoyed more were the chapters dealing with the impact of the events of 1916 and the years thereafter. There were good chapters dealing with the impact or otherwise on the evolution of the North, some good material about the ways in which the rising was marked over the years, the seeds of bitterness from the civil war and the airbrushing of men who fought in the Somme ‘for King and Country’ out of Ireland’s collective consciousness for many years. The bias in Civil Service also to people who were on ‘the right side’ in the Civil war was instructive, though some of the material about how the dependents of people who died in 1916 had to ‘fight for their rights’ was probably too detailed.
As a whole it did advance my knowledge of the period and it informed me about the impact of that decade, probably (certainly?) the most pivotal and influential in the history of the State. But I really had to push myself on many times as my energy waned, and I do think that with the material to hand, maybe a different way of presenting it or – possibly – a shorter book could have been kinder to the reader. Which is a pity because I think this year there is a lot of interest in the period and a slightly more accessible book would have been helpful for all concerned.
A qualified approval, I suppose.
Perhaps I had too many misconceptions and I should have read the outline on the book cover better. Because what I found was a very dense book, littered with quotes from other publications. This annoyed me a lot at the outset, but I think I got used to them as the book went on. It was not an easy read, I suppose this was inevitable given the topic. But it did – eventually – help me to make sense of some of the events of the period covered.
I think what I enjoyed more were the chapters dealing with the impact of the events of 1916 and the years thereafter. There were good chapters dealing with the impact or otherwise on the evolution of the North, some good material about the ways in which the rising was marked over the years, the seeds of bitterness from the civil war and the airbrushing of men who fought in the Somme ‘for King and Country’ out of Ireland’s collective consciousness for many years. The bias in Civil Service also to people who were on ‘the right side’ in the Civil war was instructive, though some of the material about how the dependents of people who died in 1916 had to ‘fight for their rights’ was probably too detailed.
As a whole it did advance my knowledge of the period and it informed me about the impact of that decade, probably (certainly?) the most pivotal and influential in the history of the State. But I really had to push myself on many times as my energy waned, and I do think that with the material to hand, maybe a different way of presenting it or – possibly – a shorter book could have been kinder to the reader. Which is a pity because I think this year there is a lot of interest in the period and a slightly more accessible book would have been helpful for all concerned.
A qualified approval, I suppose.
September 25, 2017
Four stars for information and one star for the writing. Ferriter never met a fact he wasn't willing to shoehorn into a sentence. There were sentences, once you dissected them, where the noun and verb did not agree.
And even with the poor writing, I learned a lot about the Irish Revolution.
And even with the poor writing, I learned a lot about the Irish Revolution.
December 9, 2022
I write this review with the massive caveat that I am just a reader with no formal qualifications in History whatsoever. Anything that I write here is purely just my opinion.
The amount of information in this book is immense and the author clearly knows this material inside out, so in terms of information this book is excellent. Unfortunately, the amount of information means that the book can be quite dense to read at times, as facts, figures and descriptions are constantly being thrown at you. Ferriter interweaves a huge variety of perspectives (including political, military, civilian and social) throughout the book to give a nuanced a view on the key happenings and events, and this is to be commended.
The level of information and amount of facts also sometimes leads to long and cumbersome sentences. I had to read some passages several times to properly understand them. There are also some sentences which don't seem to make grammatical sense, for example on page 68:
"For historian and Labour Party politician Conor Cruise O'Brien, for example, whose grandfather was David Sheehy, a nationalist MP who was embittered at the defeat of the constitutional nationalists in 1918 and very hostile to Sinn Féin, was the origin of all later ills".
This is not to have a dig at the author. I just think that he could have broken some parts down into shorter sentences, which ultimately leads to a better reading experience.
I also would not recommend this book if you are new to the subject of the Irish Revolution and Civil War Period, as this book gives an in-depth analysis rather than a helicopter overview. However if you are already somewhat aware of these topics then you will definitely find parts of this book interesting.
So in conclusion, Ferriter has included a huge array of information in this book. I really like the way he gives a variety of perspectives on all issues covered and does this in a very balanced way in the form of a true historian. I enjoyed discovering new minutiae about the key events and famous figures associated with the Irish revolutionary period. However, I did at times find the book quite challenging to read because of the volume of information included.
The amount of information in this book is immense and the author clearly knows this material inside out, so in terms of information this book is excellent. Unfortunately, the amount of information means that the book can be quite dense to read at times, as facts, figures and descriptions are constantly being thrown at you. Ferriter interweaves a huge variety of perspectives (including political, military, civilian and social) throughout the book to give a nuanced a view on the key happenings and events, and this is to be commended.
The level of information and amount of facts also sometimes leads to long and cumbersome sentences. I had to read some passages several times to properly understand them. There are also some sentences which don't seem to make grammatical sense, for example on page 68:
"For historian and Labour Party politician Conor Cruise O'Brien, for example, whose grandfather was David Sheehy, a nationalist MP who was embittered at the defeat of the constitutional nationalists in 1918 and very hostile to Sinn Féin, was the origin of all later ills".
This is not to have a dig at the author. I just think that he could have broken some parts down into shorter sentences, which ultimately leads to a better reading experience.
I also would not recommend this book if you are new to the subject of the Irish Revolution and Civil War Period, as this book gives an in-depth analysis rather than a helicopter overview. However if you are already somewhat aware of these topics then you will definitely find parts of this book interesting.
So in conclusion, Ferriter has included a huge array of information in this book. I really like the way he gives a variety of perspectives on all issues covered and does this in a very balanced way in the form of a true historian. I enjoyed discovering new minutiae about the key events and famous figures associated with the Irish revolutionary period. However, I did at times find the book quite challenging to read because of the volume of information included.
March 20, 2019
Diarmaid Ferriter has developed a well-deserved reputation as an Irish historian keen to look past the main players in major events of his country's history and look into the lives of the everyday people who were affected. This study of the birth of the IRA, the Easter Rising, the Irish Civil War and War of Independence leading to the partition of Ireland doesn't quite keep up that reputation, spending a lot of time looking at the tensions between Collins, De Valera, Pearse and their comrades, but does make efforts to look at how the general population was affected by the internecine violence. It also goes to efforts to dispel the rose-tinted view of the Rising and its aftermath that has become popular, and takes in the tensions from the Unionist population, as well as how shoddily the state went on to treat those it had relied on to fight for independence whilst elevating the major players to near-mythical status. Valuable reading for anyone wanting to look past the postcard views of 1916.
March 10, 2024
It is a reflective book, published at a useful time, for historians to think about the meaning of centenaries and anniversaries and the way we commemorate the past. It has lots of historiographical consideration so it's an aid for amateur historians to spot spurious reasoning, both in historical analysis and in public discourse. Its reflections on peace, justice, memory and the sealing of archives are also thought-provoking as we go through more periods of sectarian war.
June 22, 2017
I was looking to find out more about The period of revolution, independence, and civil war in Ireland, and while this book wasn't the final word on that period, it's the perfect place to begin a serious examination. Broken into three sections, it examines how the history of this contentious period was set down, how the participants experienced the period as they lived through it, and finally how the period was remembered, commemorated, and fought over in the subsequent decades.
It's a heavy read at times, for all that the reader will feel many times a desire to learn more about an individual or event than this book can provide. In that, it serves best as a guide to just how complex the period was and how poorly served it is by the myths and simplifications of later years. Highly recommended.
It's a heavy read at times, for all that the reader will feel many times a desire to learn more about an individual or event than this book can provide. In that, it serves best as a guide to just how complex the period was and how poorly served it is by the myths and simplifications of later years. Highly recommended.
July 14, 2019
Well researched and good snippets of information. But it was not what I expected as that is really all it is. A research historian who basically copies and pastes quotes and snippets from multiple sources to try and paint a portrait of the times from multiple perspectives. I was looking for more of a narrative that allowed me to get to know deeper the men and women of the Rebellion years through The Troubles. If you already have that information and are only looking for different perspectives of the same events you will like it more than I did.
April 3, 2024
Several years ago at a Harvard Bookstore Warehouse Sale I picked up a book on the Irish revolutionary decade, A Nation and Not a Rabble: The Irish Revolution 1913-1923, by Dearmaid Ferriter. I cannot truthfully say I remember anything particularly specific about this book that caught my eye other than “Hey, look, a book on the Irish Revolution,” but that was quite enough for me to spend the seven dollars it was going for at the sale. It then sat on my shelf for as many years until I decided it needed to be part of this March’s sad Irish reading, in part due to a request from a friend for book recommendations that gave a good overview of the Irish revolution.
This book, it must be said, is not exactly an overview of the Irish revolution, so I will still be on the lookout for one of those. What this book is is more of a history of the history of the Irish revolution, which I did mostly have enough existing knowledge to follow, even if a good amount of it is dramatized edutainment like The Wind that Shakes the Barley (fantastic movie, not a substitute for actual history reading).
That said, this book, from my layperson’s perspective, is very good at what it does, which is bring together like a bajillion different sources and viewpoints and archival materials to lay out a much more multifaceted, nuanced, and detailed picture of both the revolutionary decade itself and the historical memory of that time in Irish (and sometimes Irish diaspora) society than you would find from, say, half a lifetime of half-remembered songs (hi). There’s a big focus in the beginning of the book on the Irish school system, and the changes in focus on what history study was for, what should be included, how it was taught, when something stopped being the last batch of current events and started becoming history that you had to actually teach people about, etc., and a big focus at the end of the book about state commemorations, both formal and informal. The chunk in the middle is more focused on slowly going through different aspects of the revolutionary decade itself and sifting through claims by various historians and what sources do and do not support their claims. There’s a lot of primary source stuff from regular people that I found particularly fascinating, especially regarding what happened after the revolution–the section on just the pensions claims for service in various British and Irish militaries and police forces really expanded my mental image of “what overthrowing a government and installing a new one looks like.” The book also contains a few choice selections of bad poetry, which I suppose is of important historical value in pointing out that just because Ireland has produced a lot of great poets that doesn’t mean that everyone in Ireland is a great poet. Also it’s entertaining, which is nice in a book this dense and whose subject matter is so generally heavy.
I don’t know that I would recommend this book to someone with no background on the Irish revolution but I would for sure recommend it very, very strongly to anyone with a nice pat narrative grasp of the Irish revolution and is using that to inform their views on basically anything at all. Ferriter does a very good job of gently poking at the assumptions at play in a variety of narratives used by various parties and it’s good to be critical of when those narratives are being used for particular ends.
Originally posted at Rabble rousing.
This book, it must be said, is not exactly an overview of the Irish revolution, so I will still be on the lookout for one of those. What this book is is more of a history of the history of the Irish revolution, which I did mostly have enough existing knowledge to follow, even if a good amount of it is dramatized edutainment like The Wind that Shakes the Barley (fantastic movie, not a substitute for actual history reading).
That said, this book, from my layperson’s perspective, is very good at what it does, which is bring together like a bajillion different sources and viewpoints and archival materials to lay out a much more multifaceted, nuanced, and detailed picture of both the revolutionary decade itself and the historical memory of that time in Irish (and sometimes Irish diaspora) society than you would find from, say, half a lifetime of half-remembered songs (hi). There’s a big focus in the beginning of the book on the Irish school system, and the changes in focus on what history study was for, what should be included, how it was taught, when something stopped being the last batch of current events and started becoming history that you had to actually teach people about, etc., and a big focus at the end of the book about state commemorations, both formal and informal. The chunk in the middle is more focused on slowly going through different aspects of the revolutionary decade itself and sifting through claims by various historians and what sources do and do not support their claims. There’s a lot of primary source stuff from regular people that I found particularly fascinating, especially regarding what happened after the revolution–the section on just the pensions claims for service in various British and Irish militaries and police forces really expanded my mental image of “what overthrowing a government and installing a new one looks like.” The book also contains a few choice selections of bad poetry, which I suppose is of important historical value in pointing out that just because Ireland has produced a lot of great poets that doesn’t mean that everyone in Ireland is a great poet. Also it’s entertaining, which is nice in a book this dense and whose subject matter is so generally heavy.
I don’t know that I would recommend this book to someone with no background on the Irish revolution but I would for sure recommend it very, very strongly to anyone with a nice pat narrative grasp of the Irish revolution and is using that to inform their views on basically anything at all. Ferriter does a very good job of gently poking at the assumptions at play in a variety of narratives used by various parties and it’s good to be critical of when those narratives are being used for particular ends.
Originally posted at Rabble rousing.
October 22, 2025
The first two-thirds of the book, bar a few irrating quirks (why does Ferriter start every second paragraph with a question?) are excellent. The discussion of historiography and the pension records are enlightening and often heartbreaking. Ferriter captures a pretty broad sweep of the revolution, from women's rights to land and does an admirably job of informing and contextualizing each issue.
The final third, discussing commemoration, is a bit of a disaster for me. As the chapters roll on, Ferriter leans more and more heavily on Irish Times opinion columns to prompt his discussion. You get the usual dry, conservative outlook that the Times still vomits out today and quotes from writers who've long lost their creditability. Its hard to take Kevin Myers (Africa is giving nothing to anyone – apart from AIDS being one of his memorable takes) or Ruth-Dudley Edwards seriously. Particularly in Myers case, Ive no idea why a good historian in 2019 was giving that washed up bigot the credibilty.
I would of liked to have seen more discussion on how a country founded on violent revolution restores peaceful democracy as the order of the day? How does said democracy remember violent overthrow of the government and Ireland's lack of financial sovereignty throughtout much of its history.
The final third, discussing commemoration, is a bit of a disaster for me. As the chapters roll on, Ferriter leans more and more heavily on Irish Times opinion columns to prompt his discussion. You get the usual dry, conservative outlook that the Times still vomits out today and quotes from writers who've long lost their creditability. Its hard to take Kevin Myers (Africa is giving nothing to anyone – apart from AIDS being one of his memorable takes) or Ruth-Dudley Edwards seriously. Particularly in Myers case, Ive no idea why a good historian in 2019 was giving that washed up bigot the credibilty.
I would of liked to have seen more discussion on how a country founded on violent revolution restores peaceful democracy as the order of the day? How does said democracy remember violent overthrow of the government and Ireland's lack of financial sovereignty throughtout much of its history.
August 19, 2020
This proved to be a very challenging read simply because it did what good historical research should do, in that it caused me to re-evaluate some previously held ideas on people and events. One small quibble is his references to the ICTU on pages 116 and 220. The ICTU only came into being during the early 1960's following the re-unification of the 2 rival trade union centres. In 1894 the Irish Trade Union Council was established and was originally know as the ITUC until 1914 when it amended its name to include its political aspirations referred to in page 116, to ITUC&LP. The split in the trade union movement, I would argue had some relevance to the thrust of this work and would have added to an understanding of the depth of the splintering of Irish society not merely in terms of the pro or anti treaty conflicts physical / political; but importantly an examination of class divisions. And indeed the north-south divide, which in this respect was a revamp of the earlier argument of the primacy of the Irish versus the British Trade Unions.
March 18, 2020
Exceptional! With the release of documents in the last decade that have now come to light regarding the period of independence in the Republic, true history is now being written with a new understanding of the conflict. If unfamiliar with Irish/Anglo history in the past century, this is a very good read to help untangle the complicated governments that have shaped this beautiful island and people. This is my second book by Mr. Ferriter and the volume was dense but in no way took away the pleasure of learning about Irish history in a well written, understanding simple way. All the characters are in play, Collins, de Valera, IRA.. all explained. For myself, my interest piqued when traveling to the Island in November and not seeing any Poppies displayed. Not ignorant about British rule and suppression, I needed to seek a more in depth answer. Mr Ferriter is an author as well as a leading professor of Irish history at Dublin university.
December 3, 2024
A very advanced history book. I was looking more a "Irish history for dummies" kind of thing and this wasn't it. But once you get through to the second section, the reading becomes a lot more fluid. The first section was rather difficult and dry and dealt with who had the right to tell Irish history, and other broad, socio-political kind of questions. But, definitely a masterful scholarly book of history.
June 15, 2018
Good book, but leave for after you have educated yourself on the basics of the period, otherwise Ferriter’s depth and intense historiography will prove difficult. Nevertheless, as books on this period in particular go, Ferriter does well to investigate every possible aspect of it, as well the impact it had and the perceptions of it leading up into the 21st century. Recommend
July 4, 2017
Informative recollections of the political movements in Ireland leading up to and beyond the Easter Rising and into the civil war. Factual but the various acronyms of the political parties got confusing if you put the book down. Not for those new to Irish history.
December 11, 2017
If you don't already know a great deal about this time period, this book will leave you feeling lost. It's really a histography, not a comprehensive history of the period, and comes off very academic and dry. Not recommended unless you're practically a scholar.
November 21, 2019
Excellent historiography of the Irish revolution. Ferriter does a better job at keeping parts of it entertaining, but the last part of the book he covers the different decades and how the war was looked back upon and changed over the generations, which was a bit dry.
April 17, 2020
This book is NOT good to learn Irish history but rather to lear of interesting few snipets of recent research about very different matters. Did not offer a coherent approach or an indepth view on anything
July 25, 2022
This is a tough read. It is not simply a history of the period but spends as much time on describing the new sources and what they reveal and then after the short history what happened in the next 100 years…
September 10, 2023
Well written history of a busy decade, probably spread too thin if anything. The final section on legacy and commemoration fell a bit flat. Still really good. I probably enjoy the historiographic emphasis of the book more than most so difficult to recommend unless you're up for that.
January 25, 2022
Excellent though with a strange structure. Best when telling the history itself, rather than the historiographical sections
April 24, 2024
Title is a lie. Historiography is great, but I picked up this book to learn some history. This really isn't readable if you're not already well versed in the history.
July 26, 2024
Not a book about the Irish Revolution, more about how the story of that revolution has been told over the years. Much of it reads as an extended bibliographical essay.
November 7, 2025
More a history of the history of the Irish Revolution, replete with primary sources but lacking in providing context and narrative.
October 14, 2023
The best of the new histories of modern Ireland: the heroes taken down from their pedestals.
In the first part of this excellent new history, all of Ireland's supposed heroes of the past century are taken down from their plinths and given a severe examination. Most of them do not get back up on their plinths again.
Diarmaid Ferriter's is a fresh and independent mind that can be relied on for a detached, but passionate re-reading of the past hundred years of my country's history although as others have commented, some basic geographic knowledge of Ireland is required, as well as some general notions as to who the main protagonists were and the main events, as well as the sequence in which they occurred.
Ferriter's account seems to be informed by careful research including reference to primary archival sources. Taking a critical approach, he begins the book with a tour d'horizon of the historiography, exposing the rhetoric and sentimentality that bedevil many histories of modern Ireland. He then (re)constructs his own version of the same narrative that recounts what happened and who did what, but in a completely fresh account in which without exception. all the protagonists one would expect to encounter, from Connolly to Collins and De Valera to Lord Carson - are revealed to have been motivated by every kind of human frailty, in an often shocking story of violence and suffering, much of it cruel and unnecessary. The history of Ireland is not something that can bear much celebration.
The second half of the book describes the immense difficulties of actually creating a new republic and adminstering it; how to establish the pension entitlements of those who had fought personally in the struggle for liberation, or their surviving dependents; and how to agree on the symbolism that henceforth would give Ireland a national identiy; as Ferriter describes them, these were awkward, very mechanical negotations out of which emerged the national myth of "the heroes of 1916", reiterated again and again in speeches and parades but never quite satisfying everyone as a true representation of who those people were and the many different things for which they were fighting - things for which some people in Ireland still haven't stopped fighting and quite possibly never will.
Ferriter has done an excellent job of "telling it like it is".
In the first part of this excellent new history, all of Ireland's supposed heroes of the past century are taken down from their plinths and given a severe examination. Most of them do not get back up on their plinths again.
Diarmaid Ferriter's is a fresh and independent mind that can be relied on for a detached, but passionate re-reading of the past hundred years of my country's history although as others have commented, some basic geographic knowledge of Ireland is required, as well as some general notions as to who the main protagonists were and the main events, as well as the sequence in which they occurred.
Ferriter's account seems to be informed by careful research including reference to primary archival sources. Taking a critical approach, he begins the book with a tour d'horizon of the historiography, exposing the rhetoric and sentimentality that bedevil many histories of modern Ireland. He then (re)constructs his own version of the same narrative that recounts what happened and who did what, but in a completely fresh account in which without exception. all the protagonists one would expect to encounter, from Connolly to Collins and De Valera to Lord Carson - are revealed to have been motivated by every kind of human frailty, in an often shocking story of violence and suffering, much of it cruel and unnecessary. The history of Ireland is not something that can bear much celebration.
The second half of the book describes the immense difficulties of actually creating a new republic and adminstering it; how to establish the pension entitlements of those who had fought personally in the struggle for liberation, or their surviving dependents; and how to agree on the symbolism that henceforth would give Ireland a national identiy; as Ferriter describes them, these were awkward, very mechanical negotations out of which emerged the national myth of "the heroes of 1916", reiterated again and again in speeches and parades but never quite satisfying everyone as a true representation of who those people were and the many different things for which they were fighting - things for which some people in Ireland still haven't stopped fighting and quite possibly never will.
Ferriter has done an excellent job of "telling it like it is".
May 21, 2024
Balanced, detailed and well written, Ferriter delivers a great piece on the most significant period contemporary Irish history. Its able to thread the line between triumphalist free state propaganda (blueshirts) and revisionist claptrap about counter-revolutionaries who betrayed the 1916 martyrs (emotional morons), leaving you with a thorough understanding of the period.
January 24, 2016
A brilliant piece of academic history.
At its heart is a narrative of events during the revolutionary era enhanced with substantial analysis & considered judgements. Either side of this is a review of the historiography and an attempt to get to the heart of the legacy issues surrounding the Irish revolution. In this 'decade of commemorations' this work not only provides a timely reassessment of the treatment of the era but also a valuable discussion on the role of history (public & academic) in society.
At its heart is a narrative of events during the revolutionary era enhanced with substantial analysis & considered judgements. Either side of this is a review of the historiography and an attempt to get to the heart of the legacy issues surrounding the Irish revolution. In this 'decade of commemorations' this work not only provides a timely reassessment of the treatment of the era but also a valuable discussion on the role of history (public & academic) in society.
June 12, 2016
Ferriter provides a violent journey into the plain lives of the people who become the Irish. Although he can skip along at quite a pace if it is an era in which you are interested, then this book will full fill all your needs and develop a whole section of questions that one must ask after reading his book. The book is cramped from start to finish, with facts figures, statistics that are all ammunition for the reader to use to build a much bigger picture of the era.
August 25, 2016
Excellent in depth study of the events in Ireland over a tumultuous 10 year period. Not recommended to anyone new to the subject, as this is certainly not a narrative. The analysis of the impact of various commemorations of 1916 through the years is particularly powerful. As someone who has recently visited the 1916 centenary exhibition, I'd be most interested in Ferriter's views on this.
January 27, 2017
Comprehensive and informative
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews