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Conference of Irish Historians in Britain

New: Northern Ireland Classics

In proportion to its size, as John Whyte famously observed, more books have been written about Northern Ireland than anywhere else on the planet. But are they any good? We invited friends and colleagues to select five classic works on the Northern Ireland conflict. The results will be posted in a series during November and December 2020.

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Claire Mitchell

Posted On 17 February 202117 February 2021 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘All these books document life in Northern Ireland as it was, and is, lived. They seek out emotional interiority as well as political discourse, the private as well as the public.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Jim Smyth

Posted On 17 February 202117 February 2021 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘Hitler – Franco – Beattie’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Niall Ó Dochartaigh

Posted On 17 February 202117 February 2021 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘The consensus was compatible with a fairly unambitious and cautious approach by the British government and didn’t present any great challenge to the argument that the conflict would ultimately be ended by defeating ‘the men of violence’.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Susan McKay

Posted On 1 February 20211 February 2021 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘What emerges is a portrait of men who were psychopaths but they also were extreme products of a dysfunctional and collapsing society.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Fionnuala O’Connor

Posted On 1 February 20211 February 2021 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘Lost Lives to me and I think to many is more than a book, the public memorial to the dead of the Troubles that otherwise few would have had.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Seán Ó hUiginn

Posted On 22 December 202022 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘I will therefore imagine that the target reader is an English MP with a typical level of knowledge of the problem.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Quentin Thomas

Posted On 22 December 202022 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘When I was posted to the Northern Ireland Office for what turned out to be a spell of 10 years (1988-98) I was conscious that Ireland had a good deal of history, as much a curse as a boon some said, and that I was largely ignorant of it.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Cathy Gormley-Heenan

Posted On 14 December 202014 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘… it was reported to have been the most frequently stolen book from Belfast bookshops…’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Connal Parr

Posted On 14 December 202014 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘You either give up when the blood hits the carpet or persevere until its merciless end.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Richard English

Posted On 14 December 202014 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘…the need to understand long pasts and to look simultaneously at non-state violence, at state action, and at the mutually-shaping relationships between them.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Katy Hayward

Posted On 14 December 202014 December 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘… the benefits of interdisciplinarity’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Roseanna Doughty

Posted On 25 November 202025 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘… scholars are seeking to explore a wide range of under-exposed aspects of the conflict, recovering nuances and experimenting with methodology.’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Rachel Caroline Kowalski

Posted On 25 November 202025 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘ … the most dishevelled book in my collection…’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Thomas Dolan

Posted On 25 November 202025 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘… it is possible to grasp the intellectual descent of ideas in Northern Ireland whilst not fathoming its postcode system…’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Arthur Aughey

Posted On 31 October 20202 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘I had changed my course from Psychology having been caught one evening on the fringes of a gun battle between army and loyalists at Shaftesbury Square…’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Jennifer Todd

Posted On 31 October 20202 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughtycomment

‘it would have been more embarrassing to mistake someone’s religion than their gender, and equally inconceivable…’

Category: New: Northern Ireland Classics

Brendan O’Leary

Posted On 30 October 202025 November 2020 By Roseanna Doughty1 Comment

‘I have gone for books which have constantly influenced me, that is books that I have re-read many times…’

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