‘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.’
Jim Smyth
‘Hitler – Franco – Beattie’
Niall Ó Dochartaigh
‘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’.’
Susan McKay
‘What emerges is a portrait of men who were psychopaths but they also were extreme products of a dysfunctional and collapsing society.’
Fionnuala O’Connor
‘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.’
Seán Ó hUiginn
‘I will therefore imagine that the target reader is an English MP with a typical level of knowledge of the problem.’
Quentin Thomas
‘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.’
Cathy Gormley-Heenan
‘… it was reported to have been the most frequently stolen book from Belfast bookshops…’
Connal Parr
‘You either give up when the blood hits the carpet or persevere until its merciless end.’
Richard English
‘…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.’
Katy Hayward
‘… the benefits of interdisciplinarity’
Roseanna Doughty
‘… scholars are seeking to explore a wide range of under-exposed aspects of the conflict, recovering nuances and experimenting with methodology.’
Rachel Caroline Kowalski
‘ … the most dishevelled book in my collection…’
Thomas Dolan
‘… it is possible to grasp the intellectual descent of ideas in Northern Ireland whilst not fathoming its postcode system…’
Arthur Aughey
‘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…’
Jennifer Todd
‘it would have been more embarrassing to mistake someone’s religion than their gender, and equally inconceivable…’
Brendan O’Leary
‘I have gone for books which have constantly influenced me, that is books that I have re-read many times…’
Appendix 3
Appendix 3: The Oral History Archive Storytelling and oral history initiatives have long since been acknowledged as an important and distinctive element of peacebuilding and reconciliation. They have assumed added significance in Northern Ireland where a lack of consensus on the causes of conflict and the appropriate mechanisms for dealing Continue Reading
Appendix 2
Appendix 2: Historians and Dealing with the Past: The Background Academic analysis of the past has played a part in conflict resolution in a variety of divided societies. In Northern Ireland itself both the Bloody Sunday Inquiry (1998-2010) and the De Silva Report (2012) appointed historical advisers whose role was Continue Reading
Appendix 1
Appendix 1: Participants in the Hertford Workshop on Historians and the Stormont House Agreement, 19 October 2016 Dr Huw Bennett (University of Cardiff). Huw Bennett is Reader in International Relations at Cardiff, where he specialises in security studies. He formerly taught at Aberystwyth University and King’s College London, at the Continue Reading
Report on a Workshop held at Hertford College, Oxford, 19 October 2016
Introduction This report considers the contribution that historians and social scientists can make to the task of ‘dealing with the past’ in Northern Ireland. Specifically, it examines the role of academics as envisaged in the Stormont House Agreement from the perspective of experienced practitioners of the relevant disciplines. The report Continue Reading
Remembering 1916 at the Ulster Museum
By William Blair The First World War is many things – terrible, epic, dramatic, tragic and compelling – but in Northern Ireland today it is, perhaps most importantly, a barometer on our ability as a ‘post-conflict’ society to deal with a complex and divisive period of our history. That is Continue Reading
Turning to the past: global contexts for the 2016 commemorations
By Niall Ó Dochartaigh In this year of peak commemoration much of the reflection on 1916 has been infused with the spirit of global history, locating the Rising in geopolitical and transnational contexts. The commemorations themselves are far less often discussed in this broader context however. The Rising was acted out Continue Reading
The Other 1916
By Jane McGaughey Nearly a decade ago, I was on a tour bus coming back to Belfast from a day-trip along the Antrim coast. The tour guide was a very charismatic woman keen on imparting all the secret tales and modern myths of the region, from the bombings of the Europa Continue Reading
What if the 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) Divisions had swapped places on the Somme?
By Richard Grayson The nationalist 16th (Irish) and unionist 36th (Ulster) Divisions on the Somme in 1916: two divisions, two phases of the British army’s most infamous battle of war, very different results, and disparate memories. But what if their experiences had been different? What if, instead of fighting on Continue Reading