Robert the Painter – an Ulster Parable

This story belongs to the Belfast of fifty years ago. It is an exemplary tale which illuminates the bitterness and violence that has been Ulster’s fate since 1969. The topography […]

Orangeism: the Making of a Tradition, Kevin Haddick-Flynn. (Wolfhound Press, £30) ISBN 0863276598. The Faithful Tribe: An Intimate Portrait of the Loyal Institutions, Ruth Dudley Edwards. (Harper Collins, £17.99) ISBN 0002558637

Up until this year there had been a dearth of work on the Orange Order. This was bound to change as once again issues over the right to parade have […]

The Irish Border: History, Politics, Culture, Malcolm Anderson and Eberhard Bort (eds.). (Liverpool University Press, £15) IBSN 0853239517

This book represents Anderson and Bort’s fourth collaboration in four years. Having jointly edited two volumes on the eastern frontier of the European Union, they published The Frontiers of Europe […]

The Belfast Blitz: April-May 1941

On 29 October 1940, Northern Ireland Prime Minister Sir James Craig made his last major speech in parliament—a typically impassioned tub-thumping assault on a Nationalist motion supporting Irish unity. By […]

Northern Nationalism: nationalist politics, partition and the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland 1890-1940 Eamon Phoenix (Ulster Historical Foundation, £14.95) (3:1)

Reviewed by Michael Farrell ‘You had opponents willing to co-operate… We were willing to help…[but] you went on the old political lines, fostering hatreds, keeping one third of the population […]