The Girl from Hockley is a new, revised edition bringing together in one new volume this remarkable story. Born into the industrial slums of Birmingham in 1903, Kathleen Dayus became a legend in her own time. She vividly recalls her Edwardian childhood and her life as a young munitions worker during the war, marriage and life below the poverty line in the 1920s. Early widowhood and the Depression forced her to relinquish her children to Dr Barnado's homes until, eight long years later, she could afford a home for them again. Her autobiography is a testament to the indomitable spirit, humour and verve that characterised her life. Her extraordinary memory for the sights, sounds and smells of her youth, her marvellous sense of the comic and above all her spirited refusal to do anything but live life to the full, deservedly made her one of the most compelling storytellers of our time.

Liam A" Duibhir charts the struggle for independence, both militarily and politically, in Donegal from before the events of Easter 1916 until the truce in 1921.Donegal has long been seen as one of the quietest counties during the War of Independence but this reputation belies an intriguing story of how republican sentiment grew in the county. From the first mention of Sinn Fein, through the conscription crisis and the success of the 1918 elections, A" Duibhir charts the rise of the new political leadership in Donegal and how they built their own system of justice and local government.Alongside the practical politics, he also highlights the role of the IRB and the activities of the volunteers in resisting and thwarting the British efforts to retain control and impose order. Featuring new information and a fresh look at events of the period, The Donegal Awakening offers an updated account of this crucial period.

The shot was fired at point blank range by Sean Culhane hitting Swanzy, as he later claimed, behind the right ear and exiting on the other side of his head between his ear and his eye. Almost simultaneously Dick Murphy, the other Cork man, fired a volley at Swanzy. As he fell further shots were fired into his body with McCorley pausing to deliver the coup de grace.Many RIC officers were killed during this period but the murders of Divisional Commissioner Colonel Smyth and District Inspector Swanzy led to unprecedented reprisals against the Catholic population in the towns of Banbridge, Dromore and Lisburn.Lawlor traces the events which led to serious sectarian rioting and the burning of Catholic owned property over a period of three months in 1920 and details, for the first time, the extent of the destruction and loss of life in these towns. The sectarian violence in Belfast during 1920-1922 has been well documented but the scale of the violence in Belfast was such that events which took place in other towns, while mentioned, were never explored in detail. Lawlor highlights the importance of Cork and the killing of Tomas MacCurtain in the tragic events that later came to pass in the north.

The 1998 Belfast Agreement promised to release citizens of Northern Ireland from the grip of paramilitarism. However, almost a decade later, Loyalist paramilitaries were still on the battlefield. After the Peace examines the delayed business of Loyalist demilitarization and explains why it included more fits than starts in the decade since formal peace and how Loyalist paramilitary recalcitrance has affected everyday Loyalists.

Drawing on interviews with current and former Loyalist paramilitary men, community workers, and government officials, Carolyn Gallaher charts the trenchant divisions that emerged during the run-up to peace and thwart demilitarization today. After the Peace demonstrates that some Loyalist paramilitary men want to rebuild their communities and join the political process. They pledge a break with violence and the criminality that sustained their struggle. Others vow not to surrender and refuse to set aside their guns. These units operate under a Loyalist banner but increasingly resemble criminal fiefdoms. In the wake of this internecine power struggle, demilitarization has all but stalled.

Gallaher documents the battle for the heart of Loyalism in varied settings, from the attempt to define Ulster Scots as a language to deadly feuds between UVF, UDA, and LVF contingents. After the Peace brings the story of Loyalist paramilitaries up to date and sheds light on the residual violence that persists in the post-accord era.

Charles J. Haughey, over the last five decades, has been involved in major political scandals of Watergate proportions: the Arms Crisis, the telephone tapping scandal, the Beef Tribunal, the Ben Dunne payments, tax evasion, the Terry Keane revelations, the Moriarty Tribunal investigation into payments to politicians, the McCracken Tribunal, etc.; In this revised edition of Fallen Idol, Ryle Dwyer updates the scandals and delivers his conclusions on the Haughey Years.; Lively, succinct, opinionated, drawing extensively on in-depth research, Forty Years of Controversy is the indispensable handbook for anyone intrigued by one of Ireland's most inscrutable politicians.

From her overprotected girlhood to her ascension to the throne at twenty-five, to her personal and national difficulties as queen, Elizabeth II has presided over her people for half a century. Acclaimed historian Erickson tells the queen's story from her point of view, letting the reader re-live Elizabeth's long and eventful life. Lilibet shows us an Elizabeth we thought we knew - but in a different light. We glimpse, as never before, the strong and appealing sovereign who has reigned over the decline of Great Britain and the fall in prestige of her own Windsor dynasty.

This volume covers the wide-ranging historical, social, and cultural developments since the end of World War II. From the austerity of the immediate post-war years to the consumerism and globalization of the present day, Post-War Literature chronicles the impact of decolonization, mass popular culture, women's liberation, postmodernism, and privatization. The works of George Orwell, Samuel Beckett, Doris Lessing, Margaret Atwood, Tom Stoppard, Salman Rushdie, and others have explored this period in varied and fascinating ways.

With over 1000 colourful images, Robert Opie brings to life the 1920s and captures the mood of this radical decade. The 1920s were a time for change and invention. The arrival of the wireless provided a new form of entertainment and "The Radio Times" was launched in 1923. The popularity of the cinema continued and was changed forever with the coming of "talkies" and "The Jazz Singer" in 1926. While there were many notable events, from the Tutankhamen discoveries to the Empire exhibition at Wembley, unemployment and worker's discontent pervaded everyday life, culminating in the General strike of 1926. For children, however, fun and amusement could be found with new cartoon characters: the antics of Felix the Cat at the pictures, tales of Pooh Bear in Milne's book and, in newspapers, Bonzo the Dog (Daily Sketch), Rupert the Bear (Daily Express), Teddy Tail (Daily Mail) and Pip, Squeak and Wilfred (Daily Mirror). Apart from women daring to smoke, the young "flappers" found freedom in the rising hemlines that revealed their legs and enabled the new energetic dances such as the Charleston and Black Bottom. It was an experimental age for hairstyles, perming, criping, bobbing. No wonder then that this decade became known as the roaring twenties.

This is the life story of Meini Dunlevy, born in Massachusetts of County Kerry parents. Meini was rearded in he grandparents' house in Dunquin. When she was 19, she eloped with an island widower to the Great Blasket, where she worked as a nurse and midwife for 36 years. Returning widowed to Dunquin, she died in 1967, aged 91. Meini's story, recorded by the author from her own accounts and those of her friends and relatives in Dunquin, is an evocation of a forceful personality and a reconstruction of a way of life that has passed.

In this most improbable of twentieth-century wars, Argentina and Great Britain waged a three-month conflict over a group of islets in the South Atlantic that hold no strategic or material value for either side, that are barely habitable by any human standard, and that have fewer permanent settlers than the total number of combatants.

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world.

Now, in Wartime, Paul Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict in which he himself fought, to weave a more intensely personal and wide-ranging narrative. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on soldiers and civilians. He compellingly depicts the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II by analyzing the wishful thinking and the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality; by describing the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most importantly, by emphasizing the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and wit.

Of course, no book of Fussell's would be complete without serious attention to the literature of the time. He offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world. In this stunning volume, Fussell conveys the essence of that war as no other writer before him has.

This is the first scholarly survey of the British constitution in the twentieth century. Indeed, it fills a very real gap in the history of Britain during the last hundred years. The book is a product of interdisciplinary collaboration by a distinguished group of constitutional lawyers, historians and political scientists, and draws where possible on primary sources. Its evaluation of the recent constitutional reforms will be of particular interest. This major interpretation of the constitution will remain authoritative for many years.

The difficulties that have dogged the Northern Ireland peace process and the implementation of the Good Friday Agreement are rarely out of the headlines. This book gives a uniquely up-to-date insight into one of the issues at stake for the people of Northern Ireland - the long-term impact of political violence on the civil population. The result of extensive research among local communities, and drawing on survey and interview evidence, Northern Ireland After the Good Friday Agreement sets this issue within the context of past conflict and the continuing sectarian violence of the present. In particular it presents the views of ordinary people about their personal experiences of political violence and the impact it has had upon their lives. Moreover, it shows how the Troubles have affected the young people of the region, and looks at the problems facing a society coming out of a protracted period of low-intensity conflict.

Between the world wars, unemployment spread throughout the industrialized world like a disease. Focusing on the United States, Britain, and Europe, Matt Perrry compares and contrasts popular attitudes and the government response toward unemployment.Looking beyond statistics and economic cycles, Perry investigates the human impact of unemployment. He uncovers the experience of being jobless from the perspective of those who lived through it, their employers and their communities. He uses oral history, memoirs, literary accounts, and newspaper articles to reveal the reality of unemployment.Perry argues that the scale of the crisis has been minimized by historianswho have tended to emphasize that prolonged unemployment was the problem of the distressed fringe.Finally, Perry argues that the lessons of the 1930s have direct relevance today since the structural problems of industrial capitalism remain inherent.

We are the people is a popular Loyalist slogan in Northern Ireland - a statement of loyalty, identity and devotion to and from Ireland's Protestants. This collection examines the meaning behind this legend, providing a critique of the issues which affect this heterogeneous community.

Synthesizing a vast body of scholarly work, Henry Patterson offers a compelling narrative of contemporary Ireland as a place poised between the divisiveness of deep-seated conflict and the modernizing - but perhaps no less divisive - pull of ever-greater material prosperity. Although the two states of Ireland have strikingly divergent histories, Patterson shows more clearly than any previous historian how interdependent those histories - and the mirroring ideologies that have fuelled them - have been. With its fresh and unpredictable readings of key events and developments on the island since the outbreak of the second world war, "Ireland Since 1939" is an authoritative and gripping account from one of the most distinguished Irish historians at work today.

This fifth edition has been extensively revised including:
* updates bringing the material covered up to 2001
* a combined chapter on Political Institutions and Local government, focusing on devolution and its effects
* the introduction of more debate and 'cultural' material
* new further reading sections at the end of each chapter
* an updated set of illustrations. _

This book will provide a ground-breaking introduction to the history of poverty and welfare in modern Ireland in the era of the Irish poor law. As the first study to address poor relief and health care together, this book will fill an important gap in the existing literature providing a much-needed introduction to, and assessment of, the evolution of social welfare in nineteenth and early-twentieth century Ireland. The collection also addresses a number of related issues, including private philanthropy, the attitudes of landowners towards poor relief and the crisis of the poor law during the Great Famine of 1845-50. Together this interlinking set of contributions will both survey current research and suggest new areas for investigation thus it is hoped, proving a further stimulus to the growing field of Irish welfare history.