IHB January Newsletter
The Year Ahead
| Now the festive season is over it’s time to look forward to the coming year. While meeting and greeting customers in the shop this Christmas I have been scanning the publisher’s lists for 2024. While some publishers have yet to send out details of their forthcoming titles, I have tracked down around 100 planned publications and present here a few highlights of what we may expect in the next twelve months. Our monthly newsletters will highlight forthcoming titles in more detail as they are published. |
Eagerly awaited are two books which consider Ireland’s history from a personal perspective. |
“Southern Irish Protestants: Histories, Lives and Literature” by Ian D’Alton is described by the author as “a reflection of – and on – my own personal journey of discovery through the medium of history. I am a ‘southern Irish Protestant.’ In these three words – somewhere, somehow – lie my own sense of identity. In truth, it tells more of what I’m not than what I am. Most of my fellow-citizens are quite simply ‘Irish.’ It would never occur to them to describe themselves as ‘southern Irish Catholics.’ But as Edna Longley remarked in 1989 if Catholics are born Irish, Protestants have to ‘work their passage to Irishness.’ Ian D’Alton is Visiting Research Fellow in the Centre for Contemporary Irish History at Trinity College, Dublin and a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has published widely on the subjects of southern Irish unionism and Protestantism.
Fergal Keane is the author of many fine books based on his experiences as a journalist in war zones around the world. His book “Wounds” won many awards and told a personal story of those who found themselves caught up in the events that followed the 1916 Rising, and in the violence of civil war in north Kerry after the British left in 1922. “The Golden World: A Personal History of Ireland” is scheduled to be published in 2024. Details from the publisher are scarce but will be provided as soon as they become available.
Two reprints are worthy of attention. “Imagining Ireland’s Pasts: Early Modern Ireland through the Centuries” by Nicholas Canny will be published in paperback this year. The book describes how various authors addressed the history of early modern Ireland over four centuries and explains why they could not settle on an agreed narrative. As an important work of historiography, it sets into context the evolution of Irish historical writings from the Renaissance to the 19th century. At one third of the price of the hardback edition this important text will hopefully reach the wide audience it deserves.
“Iona, Kells and Derry: The history and hagiography of the monastic familia of Columba” by Maire Herbert will appear this year. First published in 1988, the book outlines the history of the ecclesiastical familia of Colum Cille in Ireland and Scotland in the era between the sixth and twelfth centuries. The reprint will include an afterword from the author, surveying research developments in the interval since the book was first published and suggesting further research.
Focusing on a slightly later, if overlapping, period of early Christian Ireland, “Monasticism in Ireland, AD 900-1250” by Edel Bhreathnach is a major study of the men and women who followed a monastic life and who maintained a universal monastic ideology while incorporating monasticism into their own cultural environment.
For the archaeologist, a number of excavation reports will be issued throughout the year but two publications relevant to archaeology caught my eye. “Boyne and Beyond: Essays in Appreciation of George Eogan” is a selection of papers from the National Monuments Service 5th annual archaeology conference. “Medieval Irish Architecture and the Concept of Romanesque” by Tadhg O’Keeffe challenges the 19th century concept of the Romanesque in the Irish and European context and will appeal to archaeologists and medieval historians.
Irelands connections to the world from the early medieval period to early modern Ireland are well presented in three forthcoming titles: “The Irish-Scottish World in the Middle Ages” edited by Seán Duffy, David Ditchburn & Peter Crooks; “Ireland and the Renaissance Court” by David Edwards; and “Mendicants on the Margins. Geographical, social and historiographical margins in the study of medieval and early modern mendicant orders” edited by Dr. Malgorzata Krasnodebeska D’Aughton and Dr. Anne-Julie Lafaye.
The history of the Irish in America is comprehensively examined in “The Routledge History of Irish America” which gathers over forty scholars to explore the dynamics that have shaped the Irish experience in America from the sixteenth to the twenty-first centuries.
Into the 19th century “Land is all that Matters” by Myles Dungan examines two hundred years of agrarian conflict in Ireland and promises to be “a sweeping, immersive story that captures both the human experience and the global relationships at the heart of Irish history.”
Two new books will focus on the famines of the 19th century from the perspective of philanthropy on both sides of the Atlantic. “The Mansion House Fund 1880” by David O’Regan examines the response to the famine of 1880 while “Aiding Ireland: The Great Famine and the Rise of Transnational Philanthropy” by Anelise Hanson Shrout considers the politics of international aid and considers the role of the Irish famine as a foundational moment for normalizing international giving.
As we move forwards from the centenary of decades two new biographies of key figures who went on to play an important role in independent Ireland are to be published. “General Eoin O’Duffy : The Political Life of an Irish Firebrand” by Jack Traynor promises a fresh look at the controversial character based on new material. “Gerald Boland: A Biography” by Stephen Kelly looks at the life of a key figure in Irish political life who until now has been overlooked.
As Northern Ireland moves past it’s centenary two new books “Northern Ireland and the UK Constitution” by Lisa Claire Whitten and “Northern Ireland Beyond 100” by Dr. Desmond Bell and Dr. Liam O’Dowd consider its history and development from partition to post Brexit.
After the publication in 2023 of the wide ranging “Belfast: The Story of a City and It’s People”, a new book about the city – “Representing Belfast’s Pasts” by Raymond Gillespie – will be published later this year. The book is a collection of essays which considers how the city’s past was reimagined through the voices of historians, writers, travellers and many more who have contributed to the narrative of the city.
A number of recently published books about Northern Ireland will also be appearing in paperback in 2024 including “Making Sense of a United Ireland: Should it happen? How might it happen?”, “The Northern Ireland Peace Process : From Armed Conflict to Brexit”, “Operation Chiffon : The Secret Story of MI5 and MI6 and the Road to Peace in Ireland”, “Migrants, Immigration and Diversity in Twentieth-century Northern Ireland : British, Irish or ‘Other’?”, “Bloody Sunday: A Fifty-Year Fight for Justice” and “H Blocks: An Architecture of the Conflict in and about Northern Ireland”
Finally, not a history book but a book about making history.
Tom Reilly is well known for his approaches to the history of the role of Oliver Cromwell in Ireland. His forthcoming book “Making a Massacre: Cromwell, Ireland and the Slaughter of Innocents Scandal (Not a Real History Book)” describes his mission to change the accepted view of Cromwell.
In the words of his publisher:
“Imagine for a moment that Cromwell is completely innocent of these charges of genocide: the overwhelming verdict of history thus far. Imagine also a scenario in which this anomaly in the teaching of Irish history were discovered by a non-historian, an amateur who failed second-level history. This is that story. This is an accurate (and sideways) account of one man’s lone battle to overturn this miscarriage of historical justice – two middle fingers to mainstream academia. Most significantly, this is the story of the pushback the author has encountered from academics, in general, who have closed ranks in their reluctance to embrace incontrovertible facts.”
Perhaps the title tells all.
