20th-century history

Country House Collections

Their lives and afterlives

Terence Dooley & Christopher Ridgway, editors

Country houses have been defined by their contents as much as by their architecture, landscapes and the families who occupied them. They have boasted assemblies…

The reminiscences of Ignatius O'Brien, Lord Chancellor of Ireland, 1913-18

A life in Cork, Dublin and Westminster

Daire Hogan & Patrick Maume, editors

Ignatius O’Brien was the youngest son of a struggling Cork business family. After somewhat unhappy experiences at a Cork Vincentian school and the Catholic Univ…

Roscommon

The Irish Revolution, 1912–23

John Burke

The history of Roscommon in the 1912–23 period is one of transition to new political allegiances while retaining old economic desires. Almost wholly dependent o…

Denis Brenan Bullen (1802-66) Inspector of Anatomy for the Province of Munster

The controversial career of a Cork surgeon

Michael Hanna

Denis Brenan Bullen was a controversial figure in the medical history of Cork in the first two-thirds of the nineteenth century. As a teenager in 1820 he played…

Peadar Cowan (1903-62)

Westmeath GAA administrator and political maverick

Tom Hunt

Imprisoned during the War of Independence, Peadar Cowan accepted the Anglo-Irish Treaty and served as an officer in the Irish army until 1931. While based in At…

The Dublin Cattle Market's decline, 1955-73

Declan O'Brien

The Dublin Cattle Market was an institution in the Irish livestock sector of the 1950s. Located between Prussia Street and the North Circular Road, the market s…

The impact of the Great Famine on Sir William Palmer's estates in Mayo, 1840-69

David Byrne

This book examines the impact of the Famine on Sir William Palmer’s Mayo estates, one of the largest in the county. It describes the estates’ social and economi…

Rural tensions in nineteenth-century Knock, County Mayo

Frank Mayes

In 1879 the parish of Knock witnessed both the outbreak of the ‘land war’ and also a reported apparition of the Virgin Mary. The press coverage that resulted fr…

Vindicating Dublin

The story behind the controversial dissolution of Dublin Corporation in 1924

Aodh Quinlivan

The strained relationship between the Irish Free State and Dublin Corporation (the city's municipal government) is brought to light in this absorbing study whic…

The Queen v Patrick O’Donnell

The Man who shot the informer James Carey

Seán Ó Cuirreáin

Patrick O’Donnell achieved the status of a national hero when he killed Ireland’s most infamous informer James Carey on board a steamship off the coast of South…

The Making of The Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985

A Memoir by David Goodall

Frank Sheridan, editor

The Anglo-Irish Agreement (AIA) signed by Garret FitzGerald and Margaret Thatcher on 15 November 1985 was unique in providing a treaty-based arrangement for the…

Antrim

The Irish Revolution, 1912–23

Brian Feeney

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Antrim contained the largest Presbyterian population on the island of Ireland. It also contained most of Belfast – th…