A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes – Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Irish History

Fascinating Snippets of Irish History from the Ice Age to the Peace Process

Jonathan Bardon

• Publisher: Gill Books
• Year: 2008
• ISBN:
  9780717157549
• Topic: Histoire
• Subtopic: Histoire de l'Irlande

THE ONLY BOOK ON IRISH HISTORY YOU'LL EVER NEED!From invasions to rebellions, heroic martyrs to pragmatic politicians, industrial development to mass emigration, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes by renowned Irish historian Jonathan Bardon will take you on a sweeping journey through Irish history, getting behind the historical headlines to reveal the lived experience of Irish people. Written in easy-to-read bitesize episodes, Bardon's original and engaging style will make you feel as though you're alongside William Smith O'Brien and his rebels at the Battle of Widow McCormack's Cabbage Patch, traversing the country to banish snakes and convert Celts with St Patrick, and feasting with the Spanish Armada's Captain Francisco de Cuellar and his wild Irish hosts. From taking up arms with the United Irishmen at Vinegar Hill to standing in solidarity with the workers of the Dublin 1916 Lockout, A History of Ireland in 250 Episodes will take you right to the heart of Irish history.Featuring a cast of characters that leap off the page, from the well-known, like the hero of the War of Independence, Michael Collins, to the quirky, such as Susannah Cibber, the first soprano to sing Handel's Messiah, A History of 250 Episodes will thrill, excite and inform you from start to finish. Whether you dip in and out of episodes or devour it from cover to cover, Bardon's must-have book will teach you everything you've ever wanted to know about Irish history and much, much more beyond.

Episode 1

THE IRISH LANDSCAPE: THE LAST ICE AGE AND AFTER

It is an arresting thought that human beings had been living in Australia for 40,000 years before the very first people came to live in Ireland. Indeed, Ireland became inhabited very late in all the time that homo sapiens has roamed the Earth. The explanation for this is the last Ice Age.

Today Ireland is a detached fragment of the Eurasian landmass, from which it is separated by shallow seas. It was not always so, and if the ocean was to drop a mere hundred metres, the country would be joined again, not only with Britain but also to the European mainland. Around two million years ago severe cold conditions set in over north-western Europe. The Ice Age had begun. Then the ice relented to give way over the last 750,000 years to alternating cycles of warmth and cold.

The Munsterian Ice Age, lasting between 300,000 and 130,000 years ago, covered the entire country with two great elongated domes of ice, in places a mile thick. After a warm spell of some fifteen thousand years during which the woolly mammoth and musk ox roamed over chilly grasslands, the last Ice Age, known as the Midlandian, spread over the northern half of the country, with additional ice caps in the Wicklow and the Cork and Kerry mountains. The ice sheets began to dissolve about 15,000 BC, and two thousand years later they had all but disappeared. They left behind a landscape which had been scoured and smoothed by flowing ice. Retreating glaciers carved out U-shaped valleys and steep-sided corries. Soil and rocks had been shifted enormous distances and dumped as rubble in huge mounds of boulder clay, known as drumlins, in their tens of thousands, particularly around Clew Bay and stretching across southern Ulster from Strangford Lough to Donegal Bay. Meltwater flowing under the ice left behind sinuous ridges of gravels, known as eskers; often several miles long and up to twenty metres in height, these provided invaluable routeways later on across the boggy midlands.

The bare earth was first colonised by grasses, sorrels and dwarf willow. Half a millennium later juniper and birch flourished. Reindeer and the giant Irish deer grazed over this tundra. Then these pioneering species were all but killed off by a six-hundred-year cold snap known after a Co. Wicklow lough as the Nahanagan stadial. Around 8000 BC the process of colonisation had to begin again. As the permafrost melted the tundra, grasslands attracted willow, juniper, birch and hazel, and the larger trees soon followed.

It was now a race against time for plants and animals to reach Ireland. At first so much water was still locked up in ice further north that land bridges with the European mainland remained open. Then sea levels, which had been about sixteen metres lower than they are today, began to rise. Oak, wych-elm, holly, yew, ash, hawthorn, blackthorn and alder made it in time, but the last land bridges across the Irish Sea were almost certainly swept away by 8000 BC. Trees such as beech and sycamore remained on the British shore until brought over by man in the Middle Ages. Curiously, the strawberry tree seems to have come directly from north-western Spain to Ireland without ever having reached Britain. Animals including brown bears, wild boar, wolves, otters, badgers, red deer, stoats, pine martens, red squirrels, mountain hares, wild cats, pigmy shrews and woodmice arrived in time to make their home in Ireland. Fallow and roe deer, beavers, weasels, harvest mice, voles and polecats were left behind. The range of freshwater fish was also limited to little more than salmon, trout, arctic char, shad, lampreys and eels. Perch, pike and other coarse fish had to await later introduction by monks.

Were the first people to arrive in Ireland able to travel across land bridges running across the Irish Sea? It seems unlikely that they could walk further than the Isle of Man without getting their feet wet. The climate which greeted the first humans was much like our own, but the landscape was dramatically different.

A dense forest canopy covered the island so completely that a red squirrel could travel from Ireland’s most northerly point, Malin Head, to Mizen Head in Co. Cork without ever having to touch the ground. Sessile oaks and wych-elms dominated the wild wood, particularly on the rich glacial soils; ash was locally prominent on light limestone ground, especially in Co. Fermanagh; hazel woods flourished on thinner soils and, in season, provided rich feeding for wild boar; alder preferred the wetter lough margins; and the Scots pine, once Ireland’s most dominant tree, was confined to hill slopes and the western seaboard. Only the highest peaks, the loughs, the rivers and peat bogs, beginning to form as the rains became more persistent, were bereft of trees.

Episode 2

MESOLITHIC IRELAND

Just south of Coleraine a great ridge of basalt lies in the path of the Bann, and, after a serene passage from Lough Beg, the river is funnelled between bluffs to cascade in rapids and through weirs and sluices into a long estuary leading north-west to the Atlantic. Here in 1973, where waters draining off nearly half the surface of Ulster meet the tide, archaeologists began to unearth evidence of the very first human presence in Ireland.

Worked flints had been brought to the surface the year before close to Mount Sandel Fort near Coleraine when land was being prepared for a new housing estate. In 1973 Peter Woodman and his team of archaeologists began what seemed a routine investigation only to discover—after the carbon dating of charred hazelnut shells—that human beings had dwelt here between 7000 and 6500 BC. The generally accepted date of the arrival of people in Ireland had been put back by more than a thousand years. Over five seasons the site was meticulously excavated and its contents sieved, sifted and chemically analysed by specialists. Their findings cast a unique shaft of light back over nine millennia to focus on life in a Mesolithic encampment in Ireland.

In an artificially enlarged hollow the remains of four large huts were found. The slope of the post-holes showed that large saplings had been driven into the ground in a rough circle and bent over to form a domed roof by being lashed together. Lighter branches may have been interwoven to add strength and rigidity. Then each hut was covered with bark or deer hide and reinforced against the north wind with grass turfs lifted from inside. Around six metres wide, each hut gave shelter to perhaps a dozen people gathered a round a bowl-shaped hearth in the centre.

The last ice sheets had retreated only about three thousand years earlier, and the sea level was around five metres lower than it is today. The falls and rapids by Mount Sandel must then have made a majestic sight; below them, in early summer, salmon waited in thousands for a flood to take them upstream to spawn, and sea bass foraged at high tide in pursuit of crabs, flounder and smolts. Scale-shaped flints found in abundance almost certainly had been set in poles to harpoon these fish, together with myriads of eels moving down from Lough Neagh in autumn. Autumn too was the season for gathering hazelnuts: these were supplemented by crab-apple, goosegrass, vetches and the seeds of water lilies—these last resemble popcorn when dropped into hot fat. In midwinter wild pigs, fattened on the abundant hazel nuts, began their rutting, and male yearlings, driven out by mature boars, were vulnerable then to hunting parties armed with flint-tipped spears and arrows. This too was the time for trapping birds in the forest and overwintering wildfowl.

Flint had to be carried from as far away as the beaches of Portrush in Co. Antrim and Downhill in Co. Londonderry, and was utilised to give service for as long as possible. At a tool-working area to the west of the hollow, flint cores were roughed out and fashioned into picks and axes, while the smaller blades struck from them were shaped into knives, arrowheads, hide-scrapers, awls and harpoon flakes. One axe had traces of red ochre on its surface, which gives a hint that these people painted themselves on ceremonial occasions.

Clearly these people of the Middle Stone Age moved about in bands from place to place. The coastline has yielded up the most numerous sites, concentrated around Strangford Lough, along the Antrim coast, around Dublin and Wicklow, as far south as the Dingle peninsula and as far west as Galway Bay. Here shellfish, limpets in particular, formed a central part of the diet.

The Antrim coast was particularly attractive because here in the chalk layers is the largest area of exposed flint on the island. Elsewhere in Ireland these early inhabitants used chert, like flint formed of silicon dioxide but found embedded in carboniferous limestone. Certainly this was the case at Lough Boora, a major Middle Stone Age site in Co. Offaly, where chert was fashioned into implements very similar to those found at Mount Sandel.

For at least three thousand years these hunter-gatherers lived undisturbed in Ireland. Over the whole island these Stone Age people may not have numbered more than a couple of thousand. Certainly they made little impression on the landscape. During those three thousand years the rains became more persistent, cold winters and hot summers became less frequent, and oak, alder and elm began to tower over the hazel. Pine and birch woods covered the hills and mountains. The only technological advance that these early inhabitants made in these millennia was an increase in the size of the stone implements they made.

Episode 3

NEOLITHIC IRELAND: THE FIRST FARMERS

From around 4000 BC a dramatic transformation of the Irish economy began. Until then a small scattered population had lived exclusively by foraging, trapping and hunting. Now they began to clear the land of trees to create pastures for domestic stock and cultivation ridges for growing cereals.

Intrepid family groups began to venture across the Irish Sea and the North Channel in dug-out canoes and skin-covered boats. The perils of crossing the sea in frail craft with frightened and thirsty horned beasts can be imagined. Some of these people were newcomers, but it may be that some of the original inhabitants had learned of these farming techniques—first developed in the Middle East—and crossed over to obtain grain, cattle, sheep and pigs from Britain.

On landing, the first task was to find a stand of elm, a reliable guide to fertile and easily worked soil. Perhaps because conditions were generally too wet in Britain and Ireland for burning the forests, farmers there preferred to spread out through the wood girdling the trees with their stone axes, causing them to die back and open up the canopy. Meanwhile the women and children put up shelters and gathered leaves, twigs and other fodder to carry the cattle and sheep through their first critical winter. When the clearings lost their fertility, the farmers simply moved on to create new pastures.

In the fourth millennium BC farming was helped by a significant improvement in the climate, with average temperatures one or two degrees centigrade higher than present temperatures. The tree line was around three hundred metres higher than today, and this allowed these people to till the soil and graze their stock on high ground. The main crops were barley and emmer wheat, and, when cut with stone edged sickles, the cereals were ground with rubbing-stones on saddle querns and eaten as gruel or bread and perhaps converted into fermented drinks.

The flaked flint axe-heads of Mesolithic settlers could not easily cope with the task of ring-barking and tree-felling. Heavier polished axe-heads replaced them, and it has recently been demonstrated that one person using one of these axes can cut down a young birch tree in fifteen minutes. In a bog at Roosky, Co. Longford, one axe-head was found still in its haft of alder. Archaeologists have recorded no fewer than 18,000 axes in Ireland fashioned from a wide variety of rock types including mudstone, shale, schist and sandstone. The most highly prized stone was porcellanite, formed sixty million years earlier when hot Antrim lavas poured over clays to compress them into this hard china-like stone. Specialist factories emerged at Tievebulliagh, Co. Antrim, and on Rathlin Island; from here polished porcellanite axe-heads were traded as far away as Dorset and the Shetlands.

As techniques improved and the population rose communities became more settled. Substantial houses began to replace simple huts and shelters. At Ballynagilly, near Cookstown in Co. Tyrone, the oldest Neolithic house in either Britain or Ireland was found in 1969. This rectangular dwelling, six metres by six and a half metres, was partly made of wattle-and-daub walls, the remainder consisting of radially split oak placed upright in trench foundations. Substantial posts evidently marked the position of thatched roof supports. During construction work on a natural gas pipeline at Tankardstown in Co. Limerick in 1988 a similar house was unearthed, except that it was built entirely of oak planking with corner posts and external roof supports. Even more sophisticated dwellings were excavated at Lough Gur in Co. Limerick. The largest possessed a stone-lined damp-proof course and cavity walls insulated with brushwood and rushes.

These early Neolithic farmers generally moved on when the fields they created had lost their fertility, but not always. One of the most remarkable discoveries in recent times is a complex settlement in north Mayo known as the Céide Fields. Here a series of rectangular fields had been created by a series of low stone walls, some as long as two kilometres. An enormous amount of labour and co-operative effort must have been required over several centuries. Cultivating cereals in the smaller fields and keeping cattle in the large ones, this area was intensively farmed between 3700 and 3200 BC.

On nearly all excavated Neolithic sites fragments of pottery were found. Even the earliest pots, known as Carinated Bowls, were carefully fashioned from well-kneaded clay from which air bubbles and grit had been removed; the finished vessels were then meticulously polished before firing. Distinctive styles emerged, named by archaeologists as Lyles Hill ware, Goodland pottery, Carrowkeel ware, Grooved Ware and the like, with lugs, incised ornament and cord-impressed decoration. Many pots have been located at ritual sites, demonstrating that belief in the afterlife was powerful in Neolithic Ireland.

Episode 4

NEOLITHIC MEGALITHS

Just west of Sligo town on the top of Knocknarea mountain glistens a massive cairn visible from many miles around. Known as Queen Maeve’s tomb, this is just about the largest Stone Age monument to be seen anywhere in Europe. Clearly, over many years, a well-organised...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Preface
• Chapter 1: The Irish landscape: the last Ice Age and after
• Chapter 2: Mesolithic Ireland
• Chapter 3: Neolithic Ireland: the first farmers
• Chapter 4: Neolithic megaliths
• Chapter 5: Copper, bronze and gold: 2000–1000 BC
• Chapter 6: Before the Celts
• Chapter 7: The coming of the Celts
• Chapter 8: Preparing for the Otherworld in pre-Christian Celtic Ireland
• Chapter 9: Kings and champions
• Chapter 10: Agricola plans to conquer Ireland
• Chapter 11: Patrick the Briton
• Chapter 12: The early Irish church
• Chapter 13: A land of many kings
• Chapter 14: Poets, judges, nobles, the free and the unfree
• Chapter 15: Homesteads and crannogs
• Chapter 16: Living off the land
• Chapter 17: Saints and scholars
• Chapter 18: ‘Not the work of men but of angels’
• Chapter 19: St Columba, St Columbanus and the wandering Irish
• Chapter 20: The coming of the Vikings
• Chapter 21: The wars of the Gael and the Gall
• Chapter 22: Viking towns and cities
• Chapter 23: Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf
• Chapter 24: ‘A trembling sod’
• Chapter 25: The rape of Dervorgilla
• Chapter 26: ‘At Baginbun, Ireland was lost and won’
• Chapter 27: Waterford and Dublin: a tale of two sieges
• Chapter 28: Henry II comes to Ireland
• Chapter 29: The lordship of Ireland
• Chapter 30: Conquests and a failed treaty
• Chapter 31: John, Lord of Ireland
• Chapter 32: ‘Dreading the fury of the king’
• Chapter 33: The English colony
• Chapter 34: Feudal Ireland
• Chapter 35: ‘A great affliction befell the country’
• Chapter 36: Edward Bruce ‘caused the whole of Ireland to tremble’
• Chapter 37: ‘Famine filled the country’
• Chapter 38: The Black Death
• Chapter 39: Gallowglasses
• Chapter 40: ‘More Irish than the Irish themselves’
• Chapter 41: The Statute of Kilkenny
• Chapter 42: ‘Into the land of the savage Irish where King O’Neill reigned supreme’
• Chapter 43: A Catalan pilgrim among the unconquered Irish
• Chapter 44: Richard II’s great expedition to Ireland
• Chapter 45: The Pale
• Chapter 46: Beyond the Pale
• Chapter 47: Garret Mór FitzGerald, the Great Earl of Kildare
• Chapter 48: The decline of the House of Kildare
• Chapter 49: The rebellion of Silken Thomas
• Chapter 50: The church in turmoil
• Chapter 51: ‘Sober ways, politic drifts, and amiable persuasions’
• Chapter 52: Conn Bacach O’Neill visits London
• Chapter 53: Religious strife and plantation
• Chapter 54: Shane the Proud
• Chapter 55: The fall of Shane O’Neill
• Chapter 56: A failed plantation and a bloody feast in Belfast
• Chapter 57: An English queen, a Scottish lady and a dark daughter
• Chapter 58: ‘Warring against a she-tyrant’: holy war in Munster
• Chapter 59: The plantation of Munster
• Chapter 60: The wreck of the Armada
• Chapter 61: The last voyage of the Girona
• Chapter 62: The adventures of Captain Francisco de Cuellar
• Chapter 63: ‘The wild Irish are barbarous and most filthy in their diet’
• Chapter 64: ‘A fit house for an outlaw, a meet bed for a rebel, and an apt cloak for a thief’
• Chapter 65: The capture of Red Hugh O’Donnell
• Chapter 66: The escape of Red Hugh O’Donnell
• Chapter 67: Granuaile: the pirate queen of Connacht
• Chapter 68: Granuaile and the Composition of Connacht
• Chapter 69: The Nine Years War begins
• Chapter 70: ‘Freeing the country from the rod of tyrannical evil’
• Chapter 71: ‘The scurvy fort of Blackwater’
• Chapter 72: ‘A quick end made of a slow proceeding’: the Earl of Essex’s failure
• Chapter 73: Mountjoy and Docwra
• Chapter 74: ‘We spare none of what quality or sex soever’
• Chapter 75: The Battle of Christmas Eve
• Chapter 76: The Treaty of Mellifont
• Chapter 77: ‘Remember, remember, the Fifth of November’
• Chapter 78: ‘I know that they wish to kill him by poison or by any possible means’
• Chapter 79: The Flight of the Earls
• Chapter 80: ‘We would rather have chosen to die in our own country’
• Chapter 81: ‘Bring in colonies of civil people of England and Scotland’
• Chapter 82: A lucky escape, Scottish lairds and the division of Clandeboye
• Chapter 83: Planting Down and Antrim
• Chapter 84: The rebellion of Sir Cahir O’Doherty
• Chapter 85: The plantation of Ulster
• Chapter 86: ‘Make speed, get thee to Ulster’
• Chapter 87: The Londonderry plantation
• Chapter 88: The luck of the draw
• Chapter 89: ‘The heretics intend to vomit out all their poison’
• Chapter 90: Thomas Wentworth and the ‘Graces’
• Chapter 91: The Eagle Wing and the Black Oath
• Chapter 92: Presbyterian anger, Catholic resentment
• Chapter 93: October 1641: the plot that failed
• Chapter 94: The 1641 massacres
• Chapter 95: The Confederation of Kilkenny
• Chapter 96: ‘Your word is Sancta Maria!’
• Chapter 97: ‘The righteous judgment of God’
• Chapter 98: The curse of Cromwell
• Chapter 99: ‘To Hell or Connacht’
• Chapter 100: Priests and tories
• Chapter 101: Restoration Ireland
• Chapter 102: Ormond
• Chapter 103: Work, food and leisure
• Chapter 104: The Popish Plot
• Chapter 105: The trial of Oliver Plunkett
• Chapter 106: ‘Lilliburlero’
• Chapter 107: Three kings and thirteen apprentice boys
• Chapter 108: ‘No surrender!’
• Chapter 109: The Relief of Derry
• Chapter 110: Schomberg
• Chapter 111: The Battle of the Boyne
• Chapter 112: Galloping Hogan, Sarsfield and the walls of Limerick
• Chapter 113: Athlone and Aughrim: June–July 1691
• Chapter 114: Limerick: a second siege and a treaty
• Chapter 115: The Wild Geese
• Chapter 116: The Penal Laws
• Chapter 117: ‘The minority prevailing over the majority’
• Chapter 118: The Protestant Ascendancy
• Chapter 119: John Dunton eats and sleeps in Connemara
• Chapter 120: Wood’s Halfpence and the Drapier
• Chapter 121: A modest proposal
• Chapter 122: 1740: the year of the Great Frost
• Chapter 123: 1741: the ‘Year of the Slaughter’
• Chapter 124: The first performance of Handel’s Messiah
• Chapter 125: The second city of the Empire
• Chapter 126: Dublin: poverty, crime and duels
• Chapter 127: ‘The Irish gentry are an expensive people’
• Chapter 128: ‘A sort of despot’
• Chapter 129: Hearts of Steel, Hearts of Oak
• Chapter 130: Clearing the land
• Chapter 131: The peasantry
• Chapter 132: ‘Superfine cloth, of home manufacture’
• Chapter 133: Ulster’s domestic linen industry
• Chapter 134: Wash-mills, bleach-greens and beetling engines
• Chapter 135: ‘A vast number of people shipping off for Pennsylvania and Boston’
• Chapter 136: The voyage of the Sally
• Chapter 137: The American Revolution and Ireland
• Chapter 138: ‘Free Trade—or Else!’
• Chapter 139: The Dungannon Convention
• Chapter 140: ‘I am now to address a free people’
• Chapter 141: The failure of reform
• Chapter 142: ‘Fourteenth July 1789; Sacred to Liberty’
• Chapter 143: The United Irishmen
• Chapter 144: The Belfast Harp Festival of 1792
• Chapter 145: At war with France
• Chapter 146: Earl Fitzwilliam’s failure
• Chapter 147: Peep o’ Day Boys and Defenders
• Chapter 148: ‘I will blow your soul to the low hills of Hell’
• Chapter 149: ‘The French are in the bay’
• Chapter 150: ‘Nothing but terror will keep them in order’
• Chapter 151: ‘Croppies, lie down!’
• Chapter 152: ‘Rouse, Hibernians, from your slumbers’
• Chapter 153: The Boys of Wexford
• Chapter 154: The Battle of New Ross
• Chapter 155: The rebellion spreads north
• Chapter 156: Rebellion in County Antrim
• Chapter 157: Rebellion in County Down
• Chapter 158: Vinegar Hill
• Chapter 159: The Races of Castlebar
• Chapter 160: The Union proposed
• Chapter 161: ‘Jobbing with the most corrupt people under Heaven’
• Chapter 162: The passing of the Act of Union
• Chapter 163: Robert Emmet
• Chapter 164: ‘Now is your time for liberty!’
• Chapter 165: ‘Let no man write my epitaph’
• Chapter 166: Caravats and Shanavests
• Chapter 167: Ribbonmen, Orangemen and Rockites
• Chapter 168: Emancipation refused
• Chapter 169: The Catholic Association
• Chapter 170: The ‘invasion’ of Ulster
• Chapter 171: The Clare Election
• Chapter 172: ‘Scum condensed of lrish bog!’
• Chapter 173: A social laboratory
• Chapter 174: The Tithe War
• Chapter 175: ‘Property has its duties as well as its rights’
• Chapter 176: The Repealer repulsed
• Chapter 177: Monster meetings
• Chapter 178: A Nation Once Again?
• Chapter 179: ‘The misery of Ireland descends to degrees unknown’
• Chapter 180: ‘So much wretchedness’
• Chapter 181: The census of 1841
• Chapter 182: Phytophthora infestans
• Chapter 183: ‘Give us food, or we perish’
• Chapter 184: The Famine in Skibbereen
• Chapter 185: Fever
• Chapter 186: Emigration
• Chapter 187: The Battle of Widow McCormack’s Cabbage Patch
• Chapter 188: The Fenian Brotherhood
• Chapter 189: ‘The green flag will be flying independently’
• Chapter 190: ‘God Save Ireland!’
• Chapter 191: The growth of Belfast
• Chapter 192: Party fights
• Chapter 193: ‘My mission is to pacify Ireland’
• Chapter 194: ‘Keep a firm grip of your homesteads’
• Chapter 195: The Land War
• Chapter 196: The relief of Captain Boycott
• Chapter 197: Assassination in the Phoenix Park
• Chapter 198: The First Home Rule Bill
• Chapter 199: ‘Is them ’uns bate?’
• Chapter 200: The Belfast riots of 1886
• Chapter 201: Belfast: an imperial city
• Chapter 202: Committee Room 15
• Chapter 203: ‘Keep our noble kingdom whole’
• Chapter 204: The Second Home Rule Bill
• Chapter 205: ‘The country is bleeding to death’
• Chapter 206: Killing Home Rule with kindness
• Chapter 207: ‘De-anglicising the Irish people’
• Chapter 208: Two nations?
• Chapter 209: Cultural revival
• Chapter 210: Home Rule promised
• Chapter 211: The Covenant
• Chapter 212: The great Dublin lock-out
• Chapter 213: The Curragh ‘mutiny’
• Chapter 214: To the brink of civil war
• Chapter 215: ‘Faithful to Erin, we answer her call!’
• Chapter 216: The conspirators prepare
• Chapter 217: ‘We’re going to be slaughtered’
• Chapter 218: Easter Week
• Chapter 219: Executions and internment
• Chapter 220: Sacrifice at the Somme
• Chapter 221: The rise of Sinn Féin
• Chapter 222: The First Dáil
• Chapter 223: Return to violence
• Chapter 224: Terror and reprisal
• Chapter 225: ‘The dreary steeples’
• Chapter 226: Partition
• Chapter 227: ‘Stretch out the hand of forbearance’
• Chapter 228: The Treaty
• Chapter 229: The split
• Chapter 230: Troubles north and south
• Chapter 231: Civil war
• Chapter 232: Green against Green
• Chapter 233: Divided Ulster
• Chapter 234: ‘Not an inch!’
• Chapter 235: Northern Ireland: depression years
• Chapter 236: ‘An empty political formula’
• Chapter 237: The Economic War
• Chapter 238: Democracy in peril
• Chapter 239: ‘Forget the unhappy past’
• Chapter 240: ‘Crying for a happier life’
• Chapter 241: The Emergency
• Chapter 242: The blitz and after
• Chapter 243: The inter-party government
• Chapter 244: The Mother and Child crisis
• Chapter 245: ‘What we have we hold’
• Chapter 246: The vanishing Irish
• Chapter 247: The years of stagnation
• Chapter 248: Church and state and the IRA
• Chapter 249: New brooms north and south
• Chapter 250: The O’Neill–Lemass meeting, 14 January 1965
• Epilogue
• References
• Bibliography
• Copyright
• About the Author
• About Gill & Macmillan