From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Dymphna=20Lonergan?=
Subject: Re: Ir-D Bloomsday 2001

There are a number of official Bloomsday websites for those who
are interested. I'm part of an organising committee
for Bloomsday here in South Australia.This is our
second Bloomsday. I really appreciate the opportunity
to hear some of those songs from the book. The day has
been celebrated in Sydney and Melbourne for some
years. I think it remains largely library and
university based (although one pub in particular here
has been having a Bloomsday dinner with readings for
around 7 years now).

Dymphna Lonergan
Flinders University of South Australia

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


The latest issue of Irish University Review is a Thomas Kinsella Special
Issie, edited by Catriona Clutterbuck.

So, very much one for the Kinsella buffs...

But we are left with the vision of 'Irish Studies' as an international
phenomenon...

Book reviews include...

Anthony Roche on Grene, The Politics of Irish Drama - making a point that I
have not seen so plainly made before, of Irish dramatists 'mediating Ireland
to an audience - each hoping in turn to displace a previous interpreter
deemed to be bogus and stage Irish...' Given the self-referential nature of
drama as an art form, this seems an interesting way of opening up the
discussion of the 'stage Irishman'...

Declan Kiberd on Frazier, George Moore. It may be old age creeping up - but
whenever I read Moore nowadays I come away with increased respect...

Wanda Balzano on Thiessen, Theology and Modern Irish Art, and Carrol, ed.,
Religion in Ireland.

Toshi Furumoto on Matsumura, ed. A Companion to Irish Literature. The
Editor of this volume is the president of IASIL-Japan.

P.O'S.


Irish University Review
Volume 31 Number 1 Spring/Summer 2001

Editor Anthony Roche
Guest Editor Catriona Clutterbuck

Contact Information
Room J210
John Henry Newman Building
University College
Dublin 4
Ireland

Special Issue Thomas Kinsella

Contents

Catriona Clutterbuck
Introduction

Dennis O'Driscoll
His Wit: Humour and Satire in Thomas Kinsella's Poetry

Donatella Abbate Badin
'Rhyme and Rhythm and Beauty' : The Abandoned Formalism of
Kinsella's Early Poetry: 1956-1968

Alex Davis
Thomas Kinsella and the Pound Legacy: His Jacket on the Cantos

Ian Flanagan
'Tissues of Order' : Kinsella and the Enlightenment Ethos

Maurice Harmon
From Basin Lane to Old Vienna: Place, Counterpoint and Transcendence in
Thomas Kinsella

Peter Denmam
Significant Elements: Songs of the Psyche and Her Vertical Smile

THomas Kinsella
'The Affair'
'As an nGeibheann'

Donatella Abbate Badin
From 'An Interview with Thomas Kinsella'

Jeffersion Holdridge
Homeward, Abandoned: The Aesthetics of Home and Family in Thomas Kinsella

Lucy Collins
A Little of What We Have Found: Kinsella, Women, and the Problem of Meaning

Ruth Ling
Re-familiarizing The Familiar: From Effigy to Elegy in the Recent Marriage
Poems of Thomas Kinsella

Derval Tubridy
Difficult Migrations: The Dinnseanchas of Thomas Kinsella's Later Poetry

Book Reviews

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

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Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

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Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

In the light of the review of Paul Pickering and Alex Tyrrell's, The
People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League - see earlier Ir-D
message - it seemed worth reminding people of Kevin O'Rourke's article...

P.O'S.

Explorations in Economic History
Vol. 31, No. 1, January 1994
ISSN: 0014-4983

The Repeal of the Corn Laws and Irish Emigration

pp. 120-138

Kevin O'Rourke*

* University College, Dublin

Abstract

If the corn laws had not been repealed, grain prices would have been higher
throughout the United Kingdom than they actually were. This in turn would
have implied higher agricultural employment in Ireland. The paper estimates
counter-factual 'No Repeal' price series for grains in the United Kingdom
and then uses a model of Irish agricultural labor demand to calculate how
much higher Irish agricultural employment in the 1870s would have been in
the absence of repeal. The paper finds that repeal did significantly reduce
Irish agricultural employment. Copyright 1994, 1999 Academic Press


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (June 2000)

Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell. _The People's Bread: A
History of the Anti-Corn Law League_. London and New York:
Leicester University Press, 2000. x + 304 pp. Map,
illustrations, tables, notes, bibliography and index. £50
(hardback). ISBN 0 7185 0218 3.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Malcolm Chase ,
School of Continuing Education, University of Leeds

Rescuing the Anti-Corn Law League from the condescension of posterity

This is an important and significant book, of interest not only
to historians of mid-nineteenth politics but also of pressure
groups, religion, the theatre, women and society generally. It
represents a considerable advance on existing knowledge of the
Anti-Corn Law League (ACLL). The League was an
extra-parliamentary agitation to repeal those laws which, from
1815 until 1846, taxed imported grain on a sliding scale in
inverse proportion to the cost of domestic wheat. Along with
Chartism the ACLL dominated domestic politics in the late 1830s
and the first half of the 1840s and the two have been subject to
frequent comparison. Yet oddly, as the authors point out in the
introduction to this book, the historiography of Chartism has
outstripped in size, scope and imagination that of the ACLL.
Norman McCord's path-breaking study of 1958 [1] has remained the
standard account. Slightly amended in 1968, it has been largely
unchallenged by either monograph or journal literature.
Pickering and Tyrrell are well-placed to reverse this, given
their reputation as historians of Chartism and early Victorian
moral radicalism.[2]

So, what remains of McCord's account now that Pickering and
Tyrrell have completed their work? The answer is a great deal.
The present authors do not attempt to replace the narrative
account McCord deftly constructed of the League's origins,
development and end. Nor do they really subvert the implication
of his concluding chapter that, within and upon 'the decisive
theatre' of parliamentary politics, the ACLL was a limited
force. On the other hand, even in 1958, the limitations of
McCord's approach to the League and its history were recognised,
notably in a review by Geoffrey Best that lamented the author
bustled his readers past 'many open doorways'.[3] Pickering and
Tyrrell lead us through and beyond these doorways in a vivid and
skilful exploration of the cultural and political baggage of
ACLL supporters. The result is a volume that extends and
challenges our knowledge of the League and its times.

The stock image of the ACLL (encapsulated in exam questions
along the lines of 'Chartism failed and the League succeeded.
Discuss') is of a tight, cohesive and somewhat sober
organisation, dominated by Mancunian manufacturers. One reason
why modern histories of this body have been so thin on the
ground has probably derived from an abiding perception that it
was worthy but dull. The authors of the present volume
gleefully demolish this cliché. The book opens with an
electrifying lecture in 1842 by James Massie, an Anglican
clergyman and one of the League's star platform orators. Massie
drew a direct comparison between the League and the early German
reformation and, reaching his climax, imitated Luther's
celebrated treatment of one papal bull by setting fire to a copy
of a Corn Bill that had recently been placed before parliament.
Then, as the audience ground the ashes underfoot, he declaimed,
'So perish all the laws that would interfere with the food of
the people!' (p. 1) The account of this episode sets the scene
for much that follows, for at the heart of the book lies a vivid
account of the ACLL as political theatre, which skilfully
explores the iconography and rituals of its lectures, dinners,
bazaars and conferences. Not for nothing did the League erect
in 1840 a vast Free Trade Pavilion on the site of the epochal
Peterloo meeting of 1819. Pickering and Tyrrell also show how
the ACLL promoted itself as the vanguard of the struggle to
throw off the Norman Yoke, and how committed its active
supporters had been to political causes that ranged from the
Queen Caroline agitation of 1820 to opposing the sale of
Manchester's municipal gas undertaking in 1834.

The main vehicle for this political analysis is a detailed
collective biography of the 105 councilmen of the Manchester
Anti-Corn Law Association (ACLA) in 1839-40. This throws up a
number of interesting insights. They ranged in age from 65 down
to 21, but at 46 their average age was a full decade older than
Pickering's sample of Manchester and Salford Chartists in
1840.[4] Thirty per cent were Unitarians (who numbered only 2
per cent of the church-going population of Manchester at the
religious census of 1851). Another 15 per cent were Quakers.
No more than a half were native to Lancashire, but the authors
are able to show that overwhelmingly councilmen were long-term
Manchester residents. No surprises there then; but the ACLA
Council was very far from being merely a forum for the major
cotton manufacturers. There was a broad balance of commercial
and manufacturing interests, leavened by the professions. It
also included linen drapers, grocers and a baker, for example,
'a substantial minority...hard-working men, not of the "first
station", who have dropped out of the history of the League' (p.
228). The book is also attentive to the support received by the
ACLL from wage-earners. Sensibly, it does not seek to make more
of this than the evidence will sustain. In particular, the
authors find 'little evidence' of working-class women's
involvement (p. 133); but they show that the League cannot be
marginalised or dismissed by historians of labour. It is
regrettable, therefore, that they glide over the issue of the
League's alleged complicity in the 1842 mass strike wave in a
few lines.

Of the fifty-four men in the Manchester ACLA sample whose
marital status can be confirmed, fifty-two were married, six of
them to the sisters or daughters of fellow councilmen. Of those
fifty-two, no less than twenty-nine had wives who were
themselves active supporters of the ACLL. In its treatment of
women this book constitutes a massive advance on existing
knowledge, though it should be read in conjunction with an
illuminating essay recently published by Simon Morgan.[5] McCord
had only four references to women (all of them citations of
Harriet Martineau's _History of England during the Thirty Years'
Peace_). Pickering and Tyrrell point out Martineau donated a
novel about the civilising effects of free trade to the ACLL,
but they also do very much more than that. The result is a
rounded appraisal of the League as a forum in which women played
an important part, ancillary it is true to its internal
governance but central to the cultural life that the authors are
at pains to reclaim from obscurity.

Similarly revisionist is their attempt to establish the
geographical scope of the League. A separate chapter deals with
Wales and Ireland; and their survey of the English provinces and
Scotland identifies 223 anti-corn law associations, from Perth
southwards to Truro. The League, in the authors' view, 'worked
hard to create a nationwide public opinion based on its version
of Britishness' (p. 197). It's their belief that it succeeded,
creating along the way a culture that accelerated the
development of political parties and the idea of representative
politics. Within Westminster, they also argue that the ACLL
provided a template for subsequent 'guerrilla warfare' from the
back benches, though this claim is less convincing, despite an
appendix detailing members of parliament who voted for total and
immediate repeal of the Corn Laws on each of the five occasions
this was presented to the Commons, 1842-45. The real strength
of this study lies in its extensive research into the provinces,
to conjure some original and profound insights into the internal
life and 'the ways and means' of the ACLL. In their concluding
paragraph, Paul Pickering and Alex Tyrrell invoke E.P.Thompson's
oft-quoted trope concerning the enormous condescension of
posterity. The ACLL, they argue, has similarly been victim of
posterity's condescension. 'The League we have sought to present
was a much more varied, vital, robust and even radical
organisation. Our League upheld an inclusive definition of the
British nation in terms of nationality, gender and class that
challenged the existing order in a number of fundamental ways'.
Their rescue operation does not render McCord's study redundant,
but this was never their purpose. Pickering and Tyrrell open up
new ways of seeing not just the ACLL but also the cultural
milieu of the early Victorian middle class.

[1]. Norman McCord. _The Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1846_.
London: George Allen & Unwin, 1958.

[2]. See especially Paul A. Pickering. _Chartism and the
Chartists in Manchester and Salford_. London: Macmillan, 1995;
and Alex Tyrrell, _Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in
Early Victorian Britain_. Bromley: Helm, 1987.

[3]. Review in _Historical Journal_ 2 (1959), pp. 89-93.

[4]. Pickering, _Chartism_, p. 140.

[5]. Simon Morgan, 'Domestic economy and political agitation:
women and the Anti-Corn Law League, 1839-46', in Kathryn Gleadle
and Sarah Richardson (eds), _Women in British Politics,
1760-1860: The Power of the Petticoat_. London: Macmillan,
2000.

Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

This will interest those Irish-Diaspora list members who are working with -
and theorising - nineteenth cedntury pictures and images...


H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion[at]h-net.msu.edu (June, 2001)

Mitchell, Rosemary. _Picturing the Past: English History in
Text and Image 1830-1870._ Oxford Historical Monographs. Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 2000. xii + 314 pp. Illustrations,
bibliography, and index. $85.00 (cloth), ISBN 0-19-820844-8.

Reviewed for H-Albion by Miriam Elizabeth Burstein
, Department of English, State University of
New York, College at Brockport

Imaging History in the Nineteenth Century

In 1858, a contributor to the _Saturday Review_ suggested that
the historical novel was "the most ambitious and the most
difficult, because the most complete, manner of solving the
historical problem." The problem lay in the seemingly
disconnected nature of much political history; the answer lay in
constructing a more complete "picture." [1] One might be tempted
to dismiss "picture" as a mere turn of phrase, were it not that
the Victorians constantly invoked it and its cognates when it
came to discussing both historical fiction and the difficulties
of historiography. Whether such "picturing" was a good thing or
a bad thing was a different matter. For another critic,
"Scott's influence" had resulted in "the substitution of
life-like portraiture and clear, intelligible description, for
philosophical comparison and analysis."[2] Thus visual
language?-pictures, paintings, portraits?-pointed both to
history's goal and its potential downfall. If historical
"painting" created a sense of immediate presence, constructing
the reader as a kind of virtual witness, it also posed the
danger of superficiality. At the extreme end of
"superficiality," of course, was the dreaded costume
novel?summed up for many readers today by the works of novelists
like W. H. Ainsworth and G. P. R. James.

As Rosemary Mitchell reminds us, however, "picturing" was not
simply a metaphorical way of speaking about the historian's
craft. _Picturing the Past: English History in Text and Image
1830-1870_ argues that any account of Victorian historical
theory and practice must take into account Victorian historical
illustrations. Mitchell is particularly concerned with the
interplay between the kind of metaphorical "picturing" discussed
above and the literal pictures that dotted Victorian histories.
She focuses on what she calls, following Victorian practice,
"picturesque history": a mode that emphasized a "specific
national past," a "highly particularist and localized" ethos, an
interest in "underdogs," "the accumulation of historical
evidences. . . and the practice of empathy as a pathway to
historical understanding." And of, course, picturesque history
stressed pictures, trying to realize the past in visual form
through illustrations and word-paintings of ruins and other
significant physical embodiments of national time (pp. 15-17).
Moreover, Mitchell points out, the historical novel was crucial
to picturesque history (p. 17); indeed, as I have suggested
above, for many Victorian critics the historical novel _was_
picturesque history.

While Mitchell does her best to evade the professionalization
thesis, in which popular history vanishes off the face of the
planet as a viable approach once academics begin writing good
history, she does insist that so-called "scientific" history
undercut picturesque history's authenticity. Moreover, she also
tracks shifting attitudes to the use of illustration in
historical texts. Here, Mitchell borrows Stephen Bann's useful
distinction between "metaphoric" and "metanymic" illustrations:
the metaphoric illustration provides a "comparative version of
the text" (i.e., illustrating an event or anecdote) whereas the
metanymic illustration singles out one element of the text
(i.e., a person) (pp. 24-25). Mitchell argues that as
scientific history came to the forefront, histories increasingly
shifted from metaphoric to metanymic illustration, banishing the
metaphoric illustration to the realm of fiction and children's
history.

_Picturing the Past_ pursues this argument through a series of
interlocking case studies, drawing on such examples as Victorian
editions of Hume's _History of England_; children's textbooks,
particularly those by the indefatigable Mrs. Markham; W. H.
Ainsworth, in successful and unsuccessful modes; the popular
historian Charles Knight; histories of women; the Catholic
historian John Lingard; W. M. Thackeray and _Punch_; and
novelists like Elizabeth Gaskell and George Eliot. As this
outline suggests, Mitchell moves with ease between canonical and
non-canonical texts. In each case, she both analyzes how
illustrations work with or, on occasion, against the text, and
how authors, publishers, and illustrators collaborated on
historical texts or, on occasion, wound up at each others'
throats.

Readers will find much of value here. Mitchell accomplishes
something I would have previously considered impossible: she
actually finds a way to say interesting things about W. H.
Ainsworth, even unspeakably bad W. H. Ainsworth. Indeed, the
term she applies to his heavily picturesque work,
"conservationism" (p. 97), could usefully be extended to other
costume novelists, particularly those of the "allow me to stop
the narrative while I give you ten pages on the history of
Warwick Castle" school. Her discussion of early women's history
helpfully discusses some of the concrete issues at stake in
getting such texts illustrated, including some of the gender
politics behind women negotiating with their publishers.[3] She
is also one of the few people to remember the existence of
Hannah Lawrance, the woman whose _Historical Memoirs of the
Queens of England_ (1838) just beat Agnes Strickland's _Lives of
the Queens of England_ (1840-48) into print. Mitchell treats
her as one of the key women historians during the Victorian era,
a long-overdue act of consideration. The book is informative
throughout concerning the kinds of illustrations available, the
role of authors and publishers in deciding whether or not a
particular illustration might be used, and, of course, how
illustrations underlined or undercut textual meaning. In her
discussion of how publishers approached Hume's _History of
England_, for example, she shows how shifting attitudes to
historical place affected the illustrations (pp. 49-50). I was
particularly interested in Mitchell's accounts of how various
illustrations became "canonical," as it were, with certain
portraits utilized over and over again?-not to mention how, on
occasion, the same illustration might pop up to represent an
entirely different event. (Presumably, this explains why the
illustrations in my copy of Mrs. J. B. Webb's evangelical
historical novel, _Julamerk; or, the Converted Jewess_, set in
Turkey, toggle bizarrely between characters in vaguely oriental
dress and characters who appear to have stepped out of an
eighteenth-century English romance!)

Along the way, Mitchell points out some important problems in
the history of Victorian historiography. Her chapter on the
popular historian Charles Knight, for example, brings up two key
issues: the complex question of writing "social history," a
problem that Victorian critics found vexing; and the
relationship between history and the historical novel. In the
first instance, Mitchell shows how Knight's attempt to write a
history of "the people" ultimately founders, ending up instead
as a political history that, by intellectual sleight of hand,
becomes a "history of the people" (pp. 129-32). In the second,
she demonstrates Knight's fundamental antagonism to the
historical novel: despite the historical novel's claims to offer
up something like the "history of the people" Knight desired, he
felt that the form promoted conservative politics in its
emphasis on the ruling classes instead of the ruled (pp.
128-29).[4] If Knight's problem with social history brings up
some important questions regarding Victorian historical
methods?-there were no viable models, as yet, for writing a
fully integrated study of "the people"?-his problem with
historical fiction usefully reminds the reader that one cannot
assume that various popular genres happily co-existed.

Mitchell has largely mastered the relevant literary criticism.
The illustrations are clear and the book as a whole is
remarkably free from the typographical errors plaguing many
university press books in recent years. My quibbles are minor.
On occasion, she misses some opportunities to bring the question
of generic conflict into even greater clarity. For example, I
wanted to hear more about the antagonism to representing war and
politics in children's textbooks (p. 62), because this
antagonism became part of the justification for writing women's
history?-which in turn threatened to appropriate the "domestic"
realm otherwise claimed as the province of the historical novel.
On a terminological note, I wasn't sure that "scientific
history" was the term Mitchell wanted: most Victorians between
1830 and 1870 understood it to mean the quest for historical
"laws," à la H. T. Buckle, whereas Mitchell here uses it to mean
"critical" history, à la Langlois and Seignobos. Similarly, I
would also have been interested in a coda dealing with the later
transmutations of "picturesque history." When, in 1897, Mandell
Creighton assumed that "[w]e may agree that history should be
made as picturesque as possible; but picturesqueness cannot be
applied in patches," was he referring to a different kind of
"picturesque" ?-and was he assuming that "picturesque" must also
be "popular"?[5] Finally, one might ask if scientific (or
critical) history really killed off the historical novel qua
history. Victorian critiques of historical fiction, to the
extent that they equate historical fiction with history, usually
fudge the question of the _knowledge_ historical fiction
produces. Authors claimed one thing; their critics another.
And one might well read shifting attitudes to the historical
novel as not a "decline" but, rather, a reorientation, in which
critics become increasingly interested in the historical novel
as literature.[6]

None of this, however, is to quarrel with Mitchell's overall
achievement. _Picturing the Past_ is an important addition to
the growing scholarly literature on nineteenth-century popular
historiography, one that will be of great interest to historians
and literary critics alike.


NOTES

[1]. "Historical Romance," _The Saturday Review_ 6 (Sept. 11,
1858): 251.

[2]. "Walter Scott?Has History Gained by His Writings?," in _A
Victorian Art of Fiction: Essays on the Novel in British
Periodicals. Volume 1, 1830-1850_, ed. John Charles Olmsted
(New York: Garland, 1979), p. 556.

[3]. Cf. another helpful case study of such rhetoric in Virginia
Blain, _Caroline Bowles Southey, 1786-1854: The Making of a
Woman Writer_ (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998), pp. 74-88.

[4]. Knight's critique was echoed positively on the opposite
side of the political fence: several conservative critics cited
Sir Walter Scott's reinvention of British history as key in
sustaining national identity during and after the Reform Bill
crisis. See, for example, Archibald Alison, "The Historical
Romance," in Olmsted, p. 495; "Life and Writings of Sir Walter
Scott," _The British Critic and Theological Review_ 48 (1838):
473.

[5]. Mandell Creighton, "The Picturesque in History," in
_Historical Lectures and Addresses_, ed. Louise Creighton
(Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., 1967), p. 264.

[6] For an example of just such a reorientation, see George
Saintsbury, "The Historical Novel," _Macmillan's Magazine_ 70
(1894): 256-64, 320-30, 410-19. This is not to say that late
Victorians would altogether object to the "death by critical
history" thesis; see, e.g., Augustine Birrell, "The Muse of
History," _The Contemporary Review_ 47 (1885): 770-80.


Copyright 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the
redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit,
educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the
author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and
H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For other uses
contact the Reviews editorial staff: hbooks[at]mail.h-net.msu.edu.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


Forwarded on behalf of the British Library, London...

Subject: British Library launches new strategy and stakeholder survey

This week the British Library launches New Strategic Directions, which
outlines our plans for the next five to seven years. The responses of
staff, readers, customers, visitors and all those who use
library services in the UK will be sampled to give us an insight into the
balance of opinion among our user and stakeholder groups. There is a survey
at
the Library's website
www.bl.uk, which we hope that our users (and potential users) will
complete. All respondents will be entered in a draw to win Amazon
vouchers to spend on books and music.

The consultation survey is being widely promoted into all UK libraries by
mail-shots, posters, information leaflets and e-mails to users. There will
be a PC dedicated to the web survey in the Front Hall of our London
building and PCs for access in the Reading Room at Boston Spa
in Yorkshire.


Strategy Content

One of the Library's core values is that access to knowledge and
information empowers and enriches people. From that belief comes the
Library's vision of 'making accessible the world's intellectual, scientific
and cultural heritage. The collections of the BL and other great
collections will be accessible on everyone's virtual
bookshelf - at work, at school, at college, at home.'

In order to realise the vision, the Library will concentrate on
understanding the changing needs of users, creating opportunities to work
in partnership with other libraries, and bringing the Web centre stage in
our activities.

New Strategic Directions incorporates the recent reviews of Collection
Development, Remote Document Supply and Patent Provision and develops two
main themes:

Collections strategy: improving coverage of the UK's published output and
of digital collections while developing greater collaboration with other
libraries in collecting, preserving and providing access to research
material

Access strategy: making the collections more accessible to a wider
audience, reshaping services where there are alternative sources of supply,
and contributing to making library provision more effective in the UK.

The text of New Strategic Directions and the survey are available on the
Library's website
www.bl.uk.
Users and stakeholders without their own PC can use one of the Open Access
PCs in the Library's main buildings to
complete the survey. If you would prefer print copies of either document,
please email mailto:survey[at]bl.uk

If you have further questions about New Strategic Directions, please e-mail
ann.clarke[at]bl.uk or jonathan.purday[at]bl.uk

For press enquiries please contact val.mcburney[at]bl.uk



- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From: McCaffrey
Organization: Johns Hopkins University
Subject: Stage Irish

Paddy,
You suggested that we open up a discussion 'stage Irish' - remember you
asked
for it!
This is a topic which has come under close scrutiny in the later years of
twentieth century Irish literary scholarship. One of the earliest sightings
of
this stage-Irish phenomenon is probably found in Shakespeare's Irish
character
Macmorris who stumbled onto the stage in 1596 in Henry V muttering
incomprehensibly ?By Christ tish ill done?and ?what ish my nation? This was
the
moment when an English Stage-Irish tradition was born. Many would argue
[including me] that it is alive and well in London born Martin McDonagh 's
Beauty Queen et al. The stage Irishman [and woman for that matter] was
hijacked
by Irish writers as early as the nineteenth century and attempts were made
to
make the character more palatable but this is the point - this was a
deliberate
attempt to reconcile this theatrical problem with a more 'heroic' image. I
concede that sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. Dublin audiences were
not
always happy with the result! But the problem did not go away and is with us
still and contributes in no small way to the image of the Irish in many
parts of
the world.
Carmel



irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk wrote:

> >From Email Patrick O'Sullivan
>
>
> But we are left with the vision of 'Irish Studies' as an international
> phenomenon...
>
> Given the self-referential nature of
> drama as an art form, this seems an interesting way of opening up the
> discussion of the 'stage Irishman'...
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

For Irish Diaspora scholars interested in the earlier period, the current
issue, 'Anglo-Celtic Relations in the Early
Middle Ages', of online journal, The Heroic age, is still displayed at
http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/4/toc.html

You get a fun read and much recent scholarship, including 'In the Beginning
was the Word': Books and Faith in the Age of Bede
by Michelle P Brown, The British Library. An extended abstract of the
Jarrow 2000 Lecture with a photograph of one of the newly discovered
illustrations in the Book of Lindisfarne.

This lecture attracted much media comment here at the time - the Lindisfarne
Gospels rescued for 'Englishness'...

P.O'S.



Forwarded on behalf of...

Michelle Ziegler
Editor-In-Chief
The Heroic Age
Subject: CFP: Heroic Age

From: MichelleZi[at]aol.com

Apologies for cross posting.

The Heroic Age: A Journal of Early Medieval Northwestern Europe is currently
taking submissions for a non-themed issue scheduled for Winter 2002. This
issue is open to all topics and disciplines dealing with northwestern Europe
from 350 - 1100 CE. We are continually taking submissions for non-themed
issues. However, if you want to ensure that your work will be considered for
the Winter 2002 issue, submit it by September 15, 2001. Submissions should
be
sent to MichelleZi[at]aol.com or ZieglerM[at]slu.edu . For further information on
The Heroic Age, see our homepage at
http://members.aol.com/heroicage1/homepage.html .

Our next issue, "Anthropological Approaches to Beowulf", should be released
in July or August. Our current issue is "Anglo-Celtic Relations in the Early
Middle Ages" available at http://www.mun.ca/mst/heroicage/issues/4/toc.html
.


Michelle Ziegler

Editor-In-Chief
The Heroic Age

From: "Anne-Maree Whitaker"
To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
Subject: Re: Ir-D Stage Irish

Which reminds me, Paddy, what ever happened to the Easter competition??

Anne-Maree Whitaker


>From: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>Reply-To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>To: irish-diaspora[at]Bradford.ac.uk
>Subject: Ir-D Stage Irish
>Date: Fri 15 Jun 2001 06:00:00 +0000
>
>From: McCaffrey
>Organization: Johns Hopkins University
>Subject: Stage Irish
>
>Paddy,
>You suggested that we open up a discussion 'stage Irish' - remember you
>asked
>for it!
>This is a topic which has come under close scrutiny in the later years of
>twentieth century Irish literary scholarship. One of the earliest
>sightings
>of
>this stage-Irish phenomenon is probably found in Shakespeare's Irish
>character
>Macmorris who stumbled onto the stage in 1596 in Henry V muttering
>incomprehensibly ?By Christ tish ill done?and ?what ish my nation? This was
>the
>moment when an English Stage-Irish tradition was born. Many would argue
>[including me] that it is alive and well in London born Martin McDonagh 's
>Beauty Queen et al. The stage Irishman [and woman for that matter] was
>hijacked
>by Irish writers as early as the nineteenth century and attempts were made
>to
>make the character more palatable but this is the point - this was a
>deliberate
>attempt to reconcile this theatrical problem with a more 'heroic' image.
>I
>concede that sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't. Dublin audiences were
>not
>always happy with the result! But the problem did not go away and is with
>us
>still and contributes in no small way to the image of the Irish in many
>parts of
>the world.
>Carmel
>
>

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The Saxon Shore, another (the other?) online journal that covers the earlier
period can be found at

http://www.pitt.edu/~jegst61/

The current issue includes the latest version of Harry Jelley's article...
Article: The Birthplace of St. Patrick
Harry Jelley
>In this short piece, Harry Jelley outlines his argument, fleshed out in his
book, St. Patrick's Somerset Birthplace, that the patron saint of Ireland
was not born in Wales or Scotland, but in Somerset.

Apart from the well known facts (for example, that Patrick was a gentleman
and did come from decent people), Jelley's main argument seems to be based
on a curiously shaped monument in Somerset. One wonders if someone could
not be persuaded to go and dig it up...

P.O'S.


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Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

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Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Our attention has been drawn to the following item, pasted in below...

All that I know about this venture comes from the material displayed at the
getCITED web site.

Does anyone know more?

First thoughts... A lot of work and thought has gone into this already.
And, yes, many of you will find that your work is already listed there. But
ultimately the whole thing seems dependendent on advertising... Will it
last?

P.O'S.




>From: michael mauws
>Subject: Online database & discussion forum
>
>Fellow researchers:
>
>In order to facilitate searches for book chapters,
>working papers, conference papers and other types of
>publications not commonly indexed, a few colleagues
>and I have put together a researcher-controlled,
>online database that allows you to enter in the
>details of any publications you might want others to
>know about and to control the search terms by which
>they are brought up. In effect, it allows you to put
>your entire CV online, should you so desire.
>
>If any of you are interested, you can find it at
>www.getCITED.org. The database already has over
>300,000 identities and 3,000,000 publications (mainly
>books) in it so don't be surprised if some of your
>publications and your identity already exist. In any
>case, if you find the site useful, we would very much
>appreciate you letting other researchers know about
>it.
>
>Many thanks in advance...
>
>Michael K. Mauws, Ph.D.
>University of Alberta
>
>
- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of LOCUST HILL PRESS...

Subject: NY LAWYER QUINN AND IRISH WRITERS


New from LOCUST HILL PRESS
PO Box 260
West Cornwall, CT 06796

JOHN QUINN:
SELECTED IRISH WRITERS FROM HIS LIBRARY
Literary series #30

Now available.

Edited by Janis and Richard Londraville
and including essays by


Adrian Frazier (George Moore biographer)
A. Norman Jeffares (W.B. Yeats biographer)
Janis Londraville (Editor, letters of Quinn and Maud Gonne)
Richard Londraville (Jeanne Robert Foster biographer)
Phillip L. Marcus (Standish O?Grady biographer)
W. J. Mc Cormack (J.M. Synge biographer)
Maureen Murphy (Co-editor, IRISH LITERATURE: A READER)
William M. Murphy (J. B. Yeats biographer)
Anna MacBride White (granddaughter of Maud Gonne)

ET. AL.

John Quinn (1870-1924) sold his library in 1923, less than a year before his
death. Among his most treasured books were his Irish collection, for he
knew
many of the authors and bought their manuscripts (e.g. Joyce?s ULYSSES).

This new book from Locust Hill Press includes essays about those authors,
including, most notably, W.B. Yeats, J.M. Synge, George Moore, Lady Gregory,
James Joyce, James Stephens, Samuel Ferguson, Oscar Wilde, George Russell,
Maud Gonne, and Jack B. Yeats. But it also contains essays about lesser
known Irish writers whose work Quinn owned: Katharine Tynan, Joseph O?Neill,
Seumas O?Kelly, Edward Dowden, Eva Gore-Booth, Ernest Boyd, Patrick MacGill,
and William Bulfin. The contributors are among the most noted in the field
of Irish studies.

To order contact Locust Hill Press at locusthill[at]snet.net or Amazon.com.
Cloth only, 462 pgs., illus, $48.00

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded for information...

African Studies Association of Ireland

The establishment of an African Studies Association of Ireland and the
election of a provisional committee was agreed at a meeting held at Trinity
College, Dublin in May 2000. Present at the meeting were colleagues working
in African Studies at several Universities and Colleges across Ireland. The
aim of the Association is to promote the study of Africa in Ireland,
particularly in Higher Education, through conferences, lectures and such
like. The intention is to define African Studies in a broad and
multidisciplinary way to include social scientists, environmental
scientists, educationalists, linguists, lawyers, historians, health and
veterinary specialists and others.

For further information contact:
Dr David Dickson
Dept of Modern History
Trinity College
Dublin 2
Ireland

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


Forwarded on behalf of
Women's Committee of the Economic History Society

WOMEN AND DISASTERS

The twelfth annual workshop organised by the Women's Committee of the
Economic History Society will take place on Saturday 17th November 2001,
10am-4.30pm at the Institute of Historical Research, Senate House, Malet
St., London.

The workshop will consider disasters of all kinds: natural, episodic,
endemic, man-made, institutional, life cycle, ideological and philosophical.
The day will thus be very varied but should also bring out common themes in
the formation of, implications of, and reactions to disasters, socially,
culturally and economically.

Sessions will include wars and famines, missing women, slavery, mining
disasters, death and bereavement, and a round table on the feminist critique
of orthodox economics and the impact of orthodox economics on the economic
history of women.

Speakers include: Julie Nelson, Catherine Merridale, Marilyn Thomson,
Stephan Klasen, Richard Sheldon, Martin Johnes. Organisers: Jane Humphries &
Pat Hudson.

For further details and a registration form please enquire to:
Pat Hudson
HISAR
Cardiff University
CF1 3XU

e-mail: hudsonp[at]cardiff.ac.uk

http://www.ehs.org.uk/Conferences/workshop.htm




- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Forwarded on behalf of...
Women?s History Association of Ireland

http://www.womenshistoryireland.com/

Women?s History Association of Ireland

2001 CONFERENCE
Writing Women?s History:
hagiography, biography and autobiography


7 - 8 September 2001
University of Ulster
Coleraine


A conference which explores how Irish women
in the past have written about themselves,
and how we as historians now write about them.


Themes and Issues:

? the construction of autobiographies and women?s self-representation

? the changing nature of autobiography and biography

? the relationship which exists between biographer and subject

? the political biography: purpose, problems

? official v. unofficial biographies - how they differ

? the theory of biography



The conference will be held in the Senior Common Room, University of Ulster,
Coleraine, with its panoramic views over the River Bann. The Provost of the
University, Professor Peter Roebuck, will host the opening reception, after
which Dr. Amanda Foreman, the author of the acclaimed Georgiana, Duchess of
Devonshire, will deliver a lecture.

There is no formal conference dinner. Instead, delegates will be taken by
taxi to Portrush, where they can choose from a number of high quality
restaurants within close proximity to each other. Once dinner is over,
everyone is cordially invited to gather in the Harbour Bar for drinks. Taxis
will be organized to take everyone back to their accommodation. Click here
for further information about the Triangle area and where to eat.

On Saturday, breakfast will be served in the SCR before the talks begin.
There will be a break for lunch. The conference will close with a
round-table discussion of contemporary women?s political biography, with the
participants Lorna Siggins (Mary Robinson), Justine McCarthy (Mary McAleese
the outsider). Margaret Ward (Hanna Sheehy Skeffington) will provide a
historical context.

The conference is timed to end so that delegates can make the last train to
Belfast/Dublin/Derry on Saturday afternoon. However, if anyone would like to
stay on for the rest of the weekend, they would be very welcome. Please
indicate on your registration form if you would like to stay over on
Saturday night so an extension to your accommodation can be arranged.

For more information contact Dr. Janice Holmes, Department of History,
University of Ulster, Coleraine, Co. Derry, BT52 1SA

(028) 7032 4647 fax: (028) 7032 4952 je.holmes[at]ulst.ac.uk

http://www.womenshistoryireland.ie


PROGRAMME http://www.womenshistoryireland.com/programme.dat.htm

REGISTRATION http://www.womenshistoryireland.com/registration form.dat.htm

ACCOMMODATION http://www.womenshistoryireland.com/accommodation.dat.htm

TRAVEL http://www.womenshistoryireland.com/travel details.2.htm






- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


The following information has been supplied to us by

The American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS)

Background at
http://www.press.jhu.edu/associations/asecs/

Further information and contact point
asecs[at]wfu.edu


Irish-American Research Travel Fellowship - $1,500

Application Deadline: 1 November 2001

Eligibility: All members of ASECS? Irish sister organization, the
Eighteenth-Century Ireland Society, who are resident in the Republic of
Ireland or Northern Ireland.

Purpose: To support documentary research on Ireland in the period
between the Treaty of Limerick (1691) and the Act of Union (1800), by
enabling Irish-based scholars to travel to North America for further
research or to present their findings at the ASECS annual meeting or
that of one of its related societies.* (In alternate years, the award
will go to American-based scholars seeking to travel to Ireland.)

Restrictions: None by age, sex, race, religion, or academic rank. None
by academic discipline or sub-period of specialization within
18th-century Ireland. The fellowship is restricted to documentary
scholars, whose research centers on primary sources from the eighteenth
century (printed matter, manuscripts, buildings, works of art, or other
artifacts), rather than on the secondary literature already extant.

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Those of us who follow events in Northern Ireland will know that there is
much cause for concern there, especially in the light of the recent national
and local elections.

Note that the conflicts in Northern Ireland are covered by one of the best
designed and maintained web sites anywhere...
http://cain.ulst.ac.uk/
CAIN Web Service
(Conflict Archive on the INternet)

See also Chris Gilligan's NI discussion list at
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/irl-news.html

It does seem worth bringing to the attention of the Irish-Diaspora list a
new television series by Norma Percy, Endgame in Ireland, the story of the
Irish peace process.

The series begins next Sunday, June 24, 8 pm BBC 2. Apparently it will be
broadcast as 'Endgame in Ireland' in Britain and as 'Endgame in Ireland?' in
Northern Ireland...

Those who have seen Norma Percy's two previous series, The Death of
Yugoslavia and The Second Russian Revolution, will know that her themes are
recent military and diplomatic history, recounted to camera by the
participants. Her techniques are very effective. You watch some general or
politician and say, Good Heavens - this person is telling the truth...

So, we will watch 'Endgame in Ireland'. Or 'Endgame in Ireland?'

P.O'S.

- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
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Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

The following report has been made available to us by our friend
Leon Litvack, Queens, Belfast...


EOIN O'MAHONY BURSARY AWARD 2001

Eoin O'Mahony, well-known Cork barrister, genealogist, newspaper columnist,
radio personality, and lecturer known affectionately as 'The Pope' died in
1970.

His friends, inspired by his zest for genealogical knowledge, established an
annual bursary scheme to support other travelling scholars, amateur or
professional, who wanted to go abroad to research family history or other
Irish related areas.

One of the eight bursaries awarded this year goes to Dr Richard Aylmer who
travels to France to untangle the Anglo-Irish story of Lord Edward
FitzGerald (1763-1798), universally esteemed member of the first family of
Ireland, who was apprehended on 19 May 1798, four days before rebellion
erupted in Ireland. At the time, the Castle so misrepresented these events
that they became almost impossible to unravel. Aylmer has discovered private
letters which may cast light on the period. They are the letters of
Valence, Lord Edward's brother-in-law who was deeply involved in Irish
events during the 1796-9 period.

Other bursaries go to:

Samuel Fannin, who continues his study of Irish emigrant families to Spain
in 18th century;

Dr David Murphy, editorial assistant with the Royal Irish Academy Dictionary
of Irish Biography, who is exploring Irish involvement in the Crimean War;

Coleman Dennehy, currently researching the parliament in Ireland, 1661-66,
both as an institution and political event, an era of which there is little
reputable knowledge;

Jeremiah Falvey, Cork schoolteacher, travelling to Auchtermuchty, Scotland
to seek Sir John Arnott's roots;

Priscilla O'Connor, for research into the role of Irish clerics in Paris in
ministering to Irish people based both in France and Ireland, 1680-1760;

Patricia O'Connell who became interested in the large numbers of Irish
clerics who studied or worked at the University of Évora, Portugal whilst
researching her forthcoming book, The Irish College of Saint Patrick in
Lisbon, 1590-1834 (Four Courts Press);

Daniel Wilson, to examine church records at the Presbyterian Historical
Society, Philadelphia to trace the migration of 19th century emigrants from
the Bann Valley to Boston.

Award of bursaries:
Friday, 22 June 2001 [at] 5pm, Academy House

Further information:
Ruth Hegarty, Administrative Officer,
Royal Irish Academy, 19 Dawson Street, Dublin 2
r.hegarty[at]ria.ie
01 6380918

Promoting Study in the Sciences and Humanities since 1785


Administrative Officer,
Royal Irish Academy / Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann
19 Dawson Street,
Dublin 2,
Ireland.

Switchboard: 00 353 1 6762570
Fax: 00 353 1 6762346
Direct Dial: 00 353 1 6380918
E-Mail: r.hegarty[at]ria.ie
Website: www.ria.ie

Royal Irish Academy / Acadamh Ríoga na hÉireann
Promoting study in the sciences and humanities since 1785

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Dennis Sewell's book about Catholics in Britain is receiving some media
attention - a sample below, a book review which appeared in The Observer,
and which is taken from The Guardian web site. Richard Ingrams, the
reviewer, was the founding editor of the satirical journal Private Eye, and
has embraced a subsequent career as a curmudgeon.

I have not, as yet, myself seen Sewell's book.

P.O'S.

Forwarded for information...

http://www.books.guardian.co.uk/reviews/politicsphilosophyandsociety/0,6121,
507968,00.html

Just show me the way to go, Rome...

With so many prominent co-religionists at the heart of the establishment,
why have Catholics in Scotland and Northern Ireland had so few defenders?
Dennis Sewell investigates in Catholics

Richard Ingrams
Sunday June 17, 2001
The Observer

Catholics
Dennis Sewell
Viking £20, pp249
Asked to nominate a famous English Catholic, many people would probably
plump for GK Chesterton, despite the fact that his best known books were
written prior to his conversion. A brilliant critic, essayist and historian,
Chesterton was unusual among Catholic apologists in that he was a genuine
democrat. But he has suffered from being branded anti-Semitic - though it
has always seemed to me an unfair charge when so many of his non-believing
contemporaries like Kipling or Shaw were far more guilty on that score.
Critics overlook that anti-Catholicism was as strong a strand in English
history as anti-Semitism ever was.

Today's generation would find it hard to imagine the extent of anti-Catholic
prejudice only 30 or 40 years ago. Having been brought up by a Catholic
mother - though not a Catholic myself - I was constantly made aware of the
second-class status she occupied in the eyes of her own and her husband's
families.

It was more a political than a religious prejudice which came from the way
history was taught at schools. According to the orthodox version, the
Catholic Church in Britain had been a hotbed of vice and superstition which
had quite rightly been done away with at the time of the Reformation. Any
Catholics who survived after that time were fifth columnists in league with
the Pope and various foreign Catholic monarchs seeking to overthrow the
nouveau regime. Following in the steps of Cobbett, modern historians such as
Eammon Duffy have done much to correct this version of history but it is
surely significant that even today the expression Middle Ages is still used
as a synonym for superstition and barbarism.

In his interesting new book, Sewell reminds us that a distinctly uglier form
of anti-Catholic prejudice has survived in Scotland. Here the conflicts of
Northern Ireland have been reproduced on a smaller but no less nasty scale
with the press maintaining the fiction that, as in the Middle East, it is
just a case of two equally objectionable bands of bigots slugging it out
between themselves.

Some may find it surprising that with so many powerful co-religionists in
the media the Catholics of Scotland have not been better defended. But
snobbery is still rife among the better-connected RCs - a legacy of the days
when the likes of Hillaire Belloc and Evelyn Waugh cultivated the idea of
Catholicism as a socially superior religion to other brands of Christianity.
Such people have tended to turn a blind eye to the injustices, for example,
of the Catholics in Ireland. So far from defending them, Catholics such as
Charles Moore and Peregrine Worsthorne (editor and former editor
respectively of the Daily and Sunday Telegraph) have been among the
staunchest defenders of the Ulster Protestants.

Such perversity is proof that the Church has not been well served by its
writers and intellectuals. Nor will Sewell, himself a Catholic, secure many
converts by giving prominence to the likes of the irascible and eccentric
Paul Johnson whose career is assessed over 10 pages, while a more
interesting and certainly more religious figure, the novelist and journalist
Alice Thomas Ellis is scarcely mentioned.

Such a comparison suggests Sewell's rather erratic approach to his subject.
It is a gossipy book full of interesting tit-bits which fails to gel. One
difficulty is that at no point does the author describe what a Catholic
believes (or is supposed to believe) which marks him out from other
Christians. All the things a reader would associate with Catholicism - Mass,
confession, purgatory, the intercession of saints, opposition to divorce,
abortion and birth control - are scarcely mentioned. It is as if somebody
had written a book about cricketers without referring to what happens on the
pitch.






- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England

From Email Patrick O'Sullivan


The following item has beren brought to our attention...

I don't understand a word of it...

P.O'S.





Belfast Telegraph Newspapers Limited PUBLICATION DATE:Wednesday, 20 June
2001


Hilltop stone to mark exodus



AN emigration stone, the only one of its kind in Ireland, will
be
dedicated on a hilltop in south Armagh at summer solstice
celebrations tomorrow.

The four-ton stone was deposited during the last ice age, 50,000
years ago. It lay partially covered at Mullyard, Derrynoose,
until
the owner of the field decided to give it a place of supreme
prominence on the top of the hill.

In the late 1800s Ned Mone left his home at Mullyard to take a
cow
to Keady Fair. He never returned. After selling the animal he
headed
straight for the boat and ended up in America.

Seven of his great-grandsons will be making a nostalgic return
to
join in the dedication of the stone to the memory of those who
left
Ireland for distant lands.

They are travelling with a group of over 100 visitors who will
be
attending the Tommy Makem International Song Festival from today
until Saturday.


- --
Patrick O'Sullivan
Head of the Irish Diaspora Research Unit

Email Patrick O'Sullivan
Email Patrick O'Sullivan

Irish-Diaspora list
Irish Diaspora Studies http://www.brad.ac.uk/acad/diaspora/
Irish Diaspora Net Archive http://www.irishdiaspora.net

Personal Fax National 0870 284 1580
Fax International +44 870 284 1580

Irish Diaspora Research Unit
Department of Interdisciplinary Human Studies
University of Bradford
Bradford BD7 1DP
Yorkshire
England