Roy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast's thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast's musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast's prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.

Roy Johnston and Declan Plummer provide a refreshing portrait of Belfast in the nineteenth century. Before his death Roy Johnston, had written a full draft, based on an impressive array of contemporary sources, with deep and detailed attention especially to contemporary newspapers. With the deft and sensitive contribution of Declan Plummer the finished book offers a telling view of Belfast's thriving musical life. Largely without the participation and example of local aristocracy, nobility and gentry, Belfast's musical society was formed largely by the townspeople themselves in the eighteenth century and by several instrumental and choral societies in the nineteenth century. As the town grew in size and developed an industrial character, its townspeople identified increasingly with the large industrial towns and cities of the British mainland. Efforts to place themselves on the principal touring circuit of the great nineteenth-century concert artists led them to build a concert hall not in emulation of Dublin but of the British industrial towns. Belfast audiences had experienced English opera in the eighteenth century, and in due course in the nineteenth century they found themselves receiving the touring opera companies, in theatres newly built to accommodate them. Through an energetic groundwork revision of contemporary sources, Johnston and Plummer reveal a picture of sustained vitality and development that justifies Belfast's prominent place the history of nineteenth-century musical culture in Ireland and more broadly in the British Isles.

The Centenary Classics series examines the fascinating time of change and evolution in the Ireland of 100 years ago during the 1916-23 revolutionary period. Each volume is introduced by Fearghal McGarry who sets the scene of this important period in Ireland's history. Civil War in Ulster, originally published in 1913, analyses the events leading up to the massive arming of the Orangemen which followed the Larne gun-running. Joseph Johnston was an Ulster Protestant writing as a liberal supporter of Home Rule. He gives the book's target Protestant readership an outline of recent Irish history, making the case that Home Rule had many positive features, and that none of the perceived negative features would be worth fighting a civil war to avoid. Although Johnston's objective in writing the book was unsuccessful and the point of view has been largely forgotten, his highly readable book provides a fascinating insight into the thoughts and fears of the population of Ulster at a critical time in Irish history and the foreword and introduction, by Tom Garvin and Roy Johnston, give a contemporary analysis of the thinking behind Johnston's unusual stand.

Poems and 50% of fractal usage in Roy Johnston's 6th book, fractals that are scattered throughout nature, clouds, coastlines..

Poems by R.K. Johnston

This series of memoirs covers successive attempts by father and son to address the problem of building a rational, inclusive, national political superstructure on an all-Ireland basis, making use of the best of available European experience, and trying to counter the extremes of Catholic nationalism and Orange Protestant hegemonism.