Irish History

The British Isles hold a unique position in the history of art, a place where local traditions fuse with international ideas in extraordinary ways. At once isolated by coastal boundaries, yet also part of larger networks of divers…

The crown was the symbol of British power in Ireland, and in December 1921 opponents of the Anglo-Irish Treaty claimed that its terms tied Ireland to the Crown forever. The new Irish Free State would be within the British Commonwe…

We walk past remnants of our past every day without noticing. Our ancestors left echoes of themselves all around us, if we only know where to look and how to interpret the signs. These remnants lie all over Ireland, telling us of …

The prospect of Irish unification is now stronger than at any point since partition in 1921. Voters on both sides of the Irish border may soon have to confront for themselves what the answer to a referendum question would mean - f…

Maps allow us to see how the world is organised spatially and show us relationships which cannot be understood from simply reading a text. This magnificent book highlights a vast selection of maps that range across the centuries a…

The story of the grassroots #WakingTheFeminists movement in Irish theater, a campaign that changed how we saw the world and reshaped the future both on and off the stage. When the Abbey Theatre's 2016 centenary program excluded wo…

How do people transform a house or flat into a home that nourishes both body and soul? How do they engage in the alchemy of homemaking? This book focuses a scholarly lens on one homemaking practice, dresser- and delph-keeping in w…

The two opposing political figures that shaped Irish life in the 1980s and beyond. In the 1980s, Irish politics was dominated by a fierce rivalry between Charles J. Haughey and Dr Garret FitzGerald, both leaders of their respectiv…

The head of the Guinness family tells the true story of how his ancestors created the largest brewery in the world. In this narrative non-fiction book, Arthur Edward Guinness, the 4th Earl of Iveagh and head of the Guinness family…

There have been tramways in Britain for 150 years, but it is a story of rise, decline and slow renaissance. Trams have come and gone, been loved and hated, popular and derided, considered both old fashioned and futuristic. Horse t…

Surrounded on all sides by water, Ireland and its people have long been shaped by the sea. Ireland has a rich history of famous – and infamous – mariners: from our earliest navigators, who may have reached North America – by curra…

This book features thirty-eight sites which contain collections of the finest and most interesting - and in several instances, little known - twentieth-century stained glass in Dublin city and county; the majority of the windows w…

Throughout history, the stories of women’s lives and work have been overshadowed by those of men. Wives, especially, disappear, unacknowledged as patrons and champions of their husband’s work, as collaborators, muses, carers and m…

Whether it’s tightly rolled up between two nervous, wringing hands, proudly sticking out from a quick-stepping back pocket or carefully brought home to be kept for posterity, the matchday programme is part of the very fabric of th…

THE NUMBER 1 IRISH TIMES BESTSELLERSHORTLISTED FOR THE IRISH BOOK AWARDS HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024 An Irish Times Book of the Year 2024 Ireland is a strikingly different country now to the one it was in the mid-1990s. Dramati…

From the bestselling author Linden MacIntyre comes an engrossing exploration of one of the most significant, but nearly unknown figures of the Irish War of Independence, Sir Hugh Tudor. Appointed by Winston Churchill to lead the R…

Executed by a British firing squad on May 12, 1916, for his role in organizing the Easter Rising, James Connolly was one of the most prominent radical organizers and agitators of his day. As a labor organizer, Connolly stressed th…

Until now, in-depth analysis of key female figures in Irish republicanism in the early twentieth century has been limited. Mary MacSwiney was one of themost single-minded anti-Treaty women, leading Eamon de Valera to describe her …

KILLING THATCHER is the gripping account of how the IRA came astonishingly close to killing Margaret Thatcher and to wiping out the British Cabinet – an extraordinary assassination attempt linked to the Northern Ireland Troubles a…

‘After the massacre, the GAA became even more important to us as a real sense of identity. It’s difficult to explain but we could cling to it in a sense, and say this is ours, this is us.’ – Clare Rogan, wife of Adrian Rogan, kill…

Ballybunion to the River Kwai is the remarkable story of Don Kennedy’s harrowing experience as an Irish prisoner of war under the Japanese from 1942–45. Vividly narrated by Don’s son Fergus, this is the first account of an Irish c…

On 26th May 1986, the body of an undercover British agent was found by the side of a muddy lane, with a rope tied around its wrists and tape over each eye. Years later, it was reported that this murder might have been carried out …

Irish history is often fast and furious and nowhere more contentiously than when discussing religion. This book is designed to be read with equal profit by those who know a little and those who know a lot about the role of religio…

For over four decades the story of the extraordinary evil that occurred at the Kincora Boys’ Home in East Belfast in the 1970s and the shocking attempts by MI5 to cover it up have haunted our political and social terrain for decad…

Described by Ulster Unionist leader James Craig as the ‘root of all evil’, the Boundary Commission that convened in 1924 was a symbol of hope for nationalist Ireland and fear for unionist Northern Ireland. Offered to Sinn Féin ple…

In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Europe everyone lived ‘off the land’ in one way or another. In Ireland, however, almost everyone lived ‘on the land’ as well. Agriculture was the only economic resource for the vast majority o…

The true story of one of the biggest bank heists in Irish and British history – and the questions that remain. On a Sunday evening in December 2004, two young men were at home with their families. Both worked for the Northern Bank…

In the Prohibition era, the speakeasies of New York City provide some much-needed respite, particularly for the likes of Michael Malloy, an isolated Irish immigrant. But times are tough and for an unlikely group of associates – a …

Liam O'Callaghan's revelatory Blood and Thunder shows that the rise of Irish rugby is inextricable from the tensions, debates and divisions – of politics, religion and class – that have defined modern Irish history. Despite the po…

On 12 June 1922 King George V received at Windsor Castle representatives of the six disbanded Irish regiments. While five had long and distinguished service records, the South Irish Horse (SIH) had only been raised in 1902, as a r…