Ireland: A Social and Cultural History 1922–2002

by Terence Brown

The seminal history of Ireland’s most unusual century, thoroughly updated for the new millennium. With its starting point the bloody creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, A Social and Cultural History explores how Irish identity has shifted across eighty years of unprecedented change and violence. What was the legacy of De Valera and Sinn Fein – or of remaining neutral during the Second World War? What were the effects of the establishment of a formally recognised Republic of Ireland in 1949 and thus the continued status of Northern Ireland as part of Great Britain? How has the state of virtual civil war that has existed between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland ever since altered the course of Irish history? Terence Brown evokes all the turbulent (and often confusing) events of the last century and makes sense of them, showing with skill and wit just how Irish culture escaped from W B Yeats' backward-looking Celtic Twilight towards modernity. A Social and Cultural History is a fascinating work of synthesis – and an unforgettable book.

Genres: Ireland, History, Nonfiction, Irish Literature

512 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Ken Hall · Rating 5 out of 5]

Read this while taking an Irish Studies course at University of North London. I would rate it as indispensable for anybody with an interest in Irish history in this period. Very instructive on the hard times all artists faced in the early years of independence in the face of clerical dominance. Could probably do with being updated now to cover the boom to bust period Ireland has gone through since 2001 and the effect this has had on artists ,and commentators on the cultural life of Ireland.

[patrycja ◡̈ · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 bo ogólnie bardzo ciekawe

[Deirdre Bouquet · Rating 5 out of 5]

Truly one of the best scholarly works I have ever read. It is a tragedy delicately told through the irrefutable words of victims and villains. The greatest warning it has for readers, though there are many, is the toxin produced when a protectionist nationalism adopts and abducts the cultural idealism of a state. The same thing that produced the prosaic vision of Ireland as a Gaelic state signified by hackneyed icons and rustic personality drove Ireland to a stagnation of mind and body. Even so, Brown manages a tremendous sympathy, even celebration, of the romantically conceived Celtic personality and mourns the death of its humanistic undertones to anti-revolutionary austerity and moral conservatism. I must admit it, as much as I would like to distinguish myself from those who see Ireland as a mesh of idyllic charm and alcohol, it made me confront my own ideal without dismantling it.