Irish History

Richard Crosbie (1756-1824) is rightly celebrated as Ireland's first aeronaut. Inspired by balloon experiments in France, he constructed a hydrogen balloon with the aim of flying across the Irish Sea....

Derry~Londonderry has a distinctive cultural history which reflects its unique position in the history of Ireland. This ground-breaking book examines three centuries of music and theatre in the city highlighting...

From Hugh de Lacy's effective conquest of Meath in the 1170s and the establishment of Anglo-Norman power, through to the demise of what has been termed the `landed aristocracy' at...

Like all guerrilla wars, the Irish War of Independence was characterised by great courage and ruthless brutality. It created many heroes and spawned two of the most hated forces that...

Ireland's landscape is marked by fault lines of religious, ethnic, and political identity that have shaped its troubled history. Troubled Geographies maps this history by detailing the patterns of change...

David Thomson visited the remote sea coasts of the Scottish Isles and the West of Ireland on journeys in search of the legends of the selchies - mythological creatures who...

This book, astonishing and terrifying in its revelations, is the first of its kind to examine the role of religion in Northern Ireland by talking directly to those involved, to...

This is a comprehensive narrative history of British and Irish efforts to establish a devolved parliament and government in Ireland. It explains Home Rule's invention as a means of uniting...

Before Easter 1916 Dublin had been a city much like any other British city, comparable to Bristol or Liverpool and part of a complex, deep-rooted British world. Many of Dublin's...

e eclectic scientist and inventor Prof. John Joly from Co. Offaly who, at fifty-eight, helped to defend Trinity College Dublin throughout the Rising. Many enlisted to fight for Irish Home...

The Book of Kells is a masterpiece of medieval art - a brilliantly decorated version of the four Gospels with full-page depictions of Christ, the Virgin and the Evangelists as...

Between August and December 1348, 14,000 people died in Dublin from the plague, a rate of 100 a day. This horrendous disease was carried to its victims by rats, and...

Secret Sights describes the elements that made up ancient Ireland, both in Celtic and pre-Celtic times, and re-constructs its customs, rituals and beliefs. Such well-known sites, the ones with all...

Controversies are high drama: in them people speak lines as colourful and passionate as any recited on stage. In the years before 1916, public battles were fought in Ireland over...

The Great Famine of 1845-52 was the most decisive event in the history of modern Ireland. In a country of eight million people, the Famine caused the death of approximately...

The Irish railway system has been an endless source of folklore, romance and social history. Dating first from the 1830s, it was one of the earliest established systems in the...

Peadar O'Donnell became involved in Irish republicanism through his initial involvement in socialism as an organiser for the ITGWU. When he was unsuccessful in establishing a branch of the Irish...

This third edition of Tracing Your Irish Ancestors retains the three-part structure of earlier editions, but updates and improves the material already included while adding new sources which have emerged...

'Some of these stories are accurate; all of them are true...' In his "An Irish History of Civilization", Don Akenson, the world's leading scholar of the Irish Dispora, fuses history...

In this charming book bestselling author Christopher Winn turns his attention to the Irish people, taking us on a enthralling journey around their homeland, discovering en route the intriguing and...

What is it about Ireland's past that so haunts the imagination? More than one answer can be found in Michael Scott's powerful new collection of twenty-nine tales. To start with,...