NEW TITLES SPRING 2019
MERRION PRESS
New Title • POLITICS
FreNzy aNd beTrayaL The aNaTOmy OF a POLITICaL aSSaSSINaTION
alan Shatter On 6 May 2014 two reports wrongly condemning the conduct of Alan Shatter, the Minister for Justice, Equality and Defence, were delivered to government buildings in Dublin. Pressurised by Taoiseach Enda Kenny, Shatter resigned from cabinet the next day, his career in tatters. A frenzied media and political reaction to alleged bugging of the Garda Ombudsman Commission’s offices and an avalanche of allegations of Garda corruption put Shatter in the eye of a storm. He was wrongly accused of covering up espionage and corruption, ignoring concerns of whistle-blowers, spying on political opponents, and of undermining the administration of justice. Damaged by false narratives and political manoeuvring by Kenny, Shatter, a TD for over thirty years, lost his Dáil seat in 2016. Pilloried by opposition politicians, journalists and commentators, Shatter was abandoned by his Fine Gael party colleagues. From the penalty points controversy, to the discovery of unknown phone tapping in Garda stations, to the explosive Charleton Report, this is the inside story of a cataclysmic period in Irish politics. Compelling and sardonic, Frenzy and Betrayal is the deeply disturbing story of how a dedicated, progressive Irish cabinet minister was falsely accused of wrongdoing and unjustly hounded from office in twenty-first-century Ireland, and his traumatic fiveyear battle for vindication and the truth.
PAPERBACK WITH FLAPS MAY 2019 €19.95 / £18.99 9781785372377 450 pages 234 x 156 mm
Alan Shatter is a former Irish Fine Gael politician who served as Minister for Justice and Equality and Minister for Defence from 2011 to 2014. He was a TD for the Dublin South constituency from 1981 to 2002, and from 2007 to 2016. He was a partner in the Dublin law firm Gallagher Shatter (1977–2011) and is the author of several academic and general publications.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • POLITICS
hOme Why PubLIC hOuSINg IS The aNSWer
eoin Ó broin Thousands are homeless, tens of thousands are languishing on social housing waiting lists, even more are unable to afford to rent or buy. Why is our housing system so dysfunctional? Why can it not meet social and affordable housing needs?
Home: Why Public Housing is the Answer examines the structural causes of our housing emergency, provides a detailed critique of government housing policy from the 1980s to the present and outlines a comprehensive, practical and radical alternative that would meet the housing needs of the many, not just the few. For three decades Government policy has been marked by an undersupply of social housing and an over-reliance on the private market to meet housing needs. Housing has become a commodity, not a public good. The result is a dysfunctional housing system that is leaving more and more people unable to access appropriate, secure and affordable homes. The answer, as argued in this transformative new book, lies in establishing a Constitutional right to housing, large scale investment in a new model of public housing to meet social and affordable housing need, real reform of the private rental sector and regulation of private finance, development and land. Eoin Ó Broin is a TD for Dublin Mid-West and Sinn Féin’s spokesperson on Housing, Planning and Local Government. He is author of Matxinada, Basque Nationalism and Radical Basque Youth Movements (LRB 2003) and Sinn Féin and the Politics of Left Republicanism (Pluto 2009). He is a regular contributor to the Sunday Business Post and An Phoblacht.
PAPERBACK MAY 2019 €14.95 / £13.99 9781785372650 272 pages 215 x 135 mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • memOIr
CLIeNT CONFIdeNTIaL SPOOkS, SeCreTS aNd COuNTer-eSPIONage durINg The CeLTIC TIger
Seán hartnett Seán Hartnett left the British army in 2005, operating as a covert surveillance technician at JCU-NI, the top-secret counter-terrorism unit in Northern Ireland. His experiences were published in the bestselling Charlie One, the book the British Ministry of Defence tried to ban. But this wasn’t the end of Hartnett’s career in counter-espionage. After operations in South Africa, Australia and London, he arrived home to Ireland, just as the Celtic Tiger was about to implode, but not before Hartnett gets his hands dirty in the boardrooms of corporate and official Ireland…
Client Confidential is a shocking exposé of the clandestine activities that foreshadowed the worst financial crash in the history of the Irish state. Many of the country’s leading financial institutions and business figures began to see the cracks in the economy and their paranoia rattled. Hartnett was called in to protect and gather information – to carry out covert and counter surveillance for blue-chip companies, semi-state bodies, national sporting associations and convicted criminals.
PAPERBACK MARCH 2019 €14.95 / £13.99 9781785372100 190 pages 215 x 135 mm
In Client Confidential, Seán Hartnett lifts the lid on the worst excesses of the Celtic Tiger – the heart of corporate greed, corruption and ineptitude in Ireland is revealed; the dark secrets never meant to see the light of day, are finally exposed. Seán Hartnett was born in Cork in 1975. He joined the British Army in 1998 and served for almost seven years before moving abroad. He has since worked as a security consultant and in the area of commercial espionage and counter-espionage. His first book, Charlie One, was published by Merrion Press in 2016.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • FICTION
kNOCkFaNe a NOveL
homan Potterton Ireland in the mid-twentieth century and Julia and Lydia Esdaile live with their widowed father, Willis, at Knockfane, a ‘Big House’ and farm where generations of the Esdaile family have lived for centuries. The family is Protestant in the predominantly Catholic Ireland that followed Independence. Willis Esdaile, obliged to protect and preserve Knockfane for succeeding generations, and acutely conscious of the weight of his inheritance, inexplicably banishes his only son and heir, Edward, to live with the child’s maternal grandfather. This creates a dilemma that Willis solves with a complicated plan to ensure that Knockfane will remain in the family after his time. But, over the years following his death, his intentions are threatened and thwarted by a series of unforeseen events and ultimately it falls to Julia and Lydia to carry on the Knockfane legacy. This story of an Irish family is also the story of two sisters: bossy, confident, independent Julia and gentle, caring, reflective Lydia, the younger sister and her father’s favourite.
Knockfane is an enthralling drama exploring inheritance, heirship and family legacy, set against the backdrop of the Ireland of its time and the conventions, customs, mistrust and suspicions which governed both Protestants and Catholics, as they come to terms with each other’s world in a rapidly changing society.
PAPERBACK WITH FLAPS APRIL 2019 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785372490 270 pages 225 x 145 mm
Homan Potterton was Director of the National Gallery of Ireland (1980–8), and Editor of Irish Arts Review (1993–2002). His memoir of growing up in County Meath, Rathcormick: A Childhood Recalled (2002), and its sequel of his career in the London and Irish art world, Who Do I Think I Am? (2017) were both critically acclaimed.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • arT
exreSSIONS OF NaTIONhOOd IN brONze & STONe aLberT g. POWer, rha
Síghle bhreathnach-Lynch At the time of his death in 1945, Albert Power was the leading nationalist sculptor in the Irish Free State, yet within a few decades he was almost forgotten. This first major examination of his life and career tells of one artist’s contribution to national identity before and after political independence. In sculpture, at that time, the emphasis was on creating a pantheon of ‘new’ Irish heroes by means of monumental and portrait commissions. Power’s work, however, sprang from deeply held nationalist beliefs and he felt that subject matter alone was insufficient to ensure a distinctive Irish art. Wherever possible he deliberately chose native stone, believing that this best conveyed a nationalist sentiment, such as the limestone he used in the beloved monument to Padraic Ó Conaire in Galway. His political commissions from 1922 onward reveal the new State’s desire for a national political and cultural identity, and in this book Power’s sculpture is explored both at the time of its production and within the broader context of writers and artists who wished to contribute to the new nation’s cultural identity, a legacy that modern Ireland enjoys today.
Síghle Bhreathnach-Lynch is an art historian and former Curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery of Ireland. She has lectured in at UCD and at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Oxford University, in Monaco, and throughout Ireland. Her publications include Fifty Works of Irish Art You Need to Know and Ireland’s Art Ireland’s History Representing Ireland, 1845 to Present.
HARDBACK JUNE 2019 €45.00 / £39.99 9781788550666 280 pages 247 x 180 mm
New Title • bIOgraPhy
buCk WhaLey IreLaNd’S greaTeST adveNTurer
david ryan Thomas ‘Buck’ Whaley was one of the greatest adventurers in Irish history. In 1788 he made an extraordinary 10month journey from Dublin to Jerusalem for a wager of £15,000, equivalent to several million today. Nearly shipwrecked in the Sea of Crete, he almost died of plague in Constantinople, narrowly avoided a pirate attack, was waylaid by bandits, and met an infamous Ottoman governor known as ‘the Butcher’. On his return, he became an overnight celebrity before suffering a catastrophic series of gambling losses that exiled him first to continental Europe (where he attempted to rescue Louis XVI from the guillotine) and then to the Isle of Man. When he died aged 34 in 1800 he had squandered an astronomical £400,000 (around €100 million) ‘without ever purchasing or acquiring contentment or one hour’s true happiness’. In his lifetime, Ireland was about to erupt in rebellion; France was on the brink of bloody revolution; and the Ottoman Empire was creaking at the seams. Whaley lit up this volatile world like a fast-burning candle but retained his ability to recognise the absurdity of his own actions and the world around him. Buck Whaley tells the full story of his remarkable life and adventures for the first time.
PAPERBACK FEBRUARY 2019 €16.95 / £14.99 9781785372292 272 pages 215 x 135 mm
David Ryan was born in Galway and holds an MA degree in history from NUI Galway. His first book, Blasphemers and Blackguards: The Irish Hellfire Clubs, was published by Merrion Press in 2012. David currently works as a television producer and scriptwriter, specialising in history and archaeology documentaries.
MERRION PRESS
New Title • hISTOry
a brOad ChurCh The PrOvISIONaL Ira IN The rePubLIC OF IreLaNd, 1969–1980
gearóid Ó Faoleán This groundbreaking book is the first to detail, with startling new revelations, just how integral the Republic of Ireland was to the Provisional IRA’s campaign at every level. The sheer level of sympathy and support that existed for militant republicanism in Southern Irish society demonstrates that the longevity of the ‘Troubles’ was due in large part to this widespread tolerance and aid. No Irish political party was without members who aided the Provisional IRA in their early years of their campaign, as former IRA volunteers attest to in interviews and previously unpublished accounts of training camps in the Republic. Juried courts for IRA suspects were phased out as both juries and judges were regularly acquitting republicans in cases of blatant IRA activity, and juries often celebrated with or congratulated the defendants: in discussion with the British government Taoiseach Jack Lynch even named judges who were deemed overly sympathetic to the IRA. The extent of activity, training, financing, armed robberies, demonstrations and goodwill for the IRA in the Irish Republic is rarely if ever acknowledged in Irish mainstream media or the education curriculum. A Broad Church: The Provisional IRA in the Republic of Ireland, 1969–1980 will dramatically change that view forever. Gearóid Ó Faoleán was awarded a PhD in Modern Irish History from the University of Limerick in 2014 and currently works in scholarly publishing in London. He is a member of the Oral History Network of Ireland and The Irish Association of Professional Historians.
PAPERBACK MARCH 2019 €19.95 / £17.99 9781785372452 272 pages 234 x 156 mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • hISTOry
a bLOOdy daWN The IrISh aT d-day
dan harvey The epic Allied invasion of German-occupied Normandy on D-Day, 6 June 1944, has been extensively chronicled. The largest seaborne invasion in history, it began the liberation of German-occupied France, and later Europe, from Nazi control, laying the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. What is less well known, however, is that thousands of Irish and members of the Irish diaspora were among the Allied units that landed on the Normandy beaches. Their vital participation has been overlooked abroad and even more so in Ireland. There were Irish among the American, British and Canadian airborne and glider-borne infantry landings; Irishmen were on the beaches from dawn, in and amongst the first and subsequent assault waves to hit the beaches; in the skies above in bombers and fighter aircraft; and on naval vessels all along the Normandy coastline. They were also prominent among the D-Day planners and commanders.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2019 €14.95 / £12.99 9781785372414 250 pages 234 x 156 mm
This Irish contribution to the most extraordinary military operation ever attempted in the history of warfare is at last told for the first time in A Bloody Dawn: The Irish at D-Day. Lieutenant Colonel Dan Harvey, now retired, is the author of Sol-
diering Against Subversion (2018), Into Action: Irish Peacekeepers Under Fire, 1960–2014 (2017), A Bloody Day: The Irish at Waterloo and A Bloody Night: The Irish at Rorke’s Drift (reissued 2017), and Soldiers of the Short Grass: A History of the Curragh Camp (2016).
MERRION PRESS
New Title • hISTOry
daChau TO The dOLOmITeS The uNTOLd STOry OF The IrIShmeN, hImmLer’S SPeCIaL PrISONerS aNd The eNd OF WWII
Tom Wall Dachau to the Dolomites is the dramatic but little-known story of a group of prominent Nazi SS hostages transported from various concentration camps to a remote Alpine valley in the final days of the Third Reich. Five Irishmen were among the 160 prisoners whom Himmler and other SS leaders attempted to use as barter to save the regime or, as a final resort, themselves. As well as eminent international statesmen, aristocrats and clergy, the group contained opposition German generals and civilian relatives of those who had plotted against Hitler, among them the family of Claus von Stauffenberg, who placed the bomb in Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair. These hostages included a number of RAF officers, survivors of the famous ‘Great Escape’, and also Colonel John McGrath from Roscommon, a World War I veteran who had left his job as manager of Dublin’s Theatre Royal to rejoin the British Army in 1939. They had been held with Russian, Italian and Polish special prisoners as ‘Nacht und Nebel’ – Night and Fog – prisoners, whose existence was a state secret. Although generally treated more favourably than regular prisoners, they lived in constant danger of execution, a fate some did not escape.Theirs is an astonishing and epic tale encompassing heroic endurance, escape, betrayal, tragedy and love. Tom Wall is a retired official of the Irish Congress of Trade Unions and is a master’s graduate of UCD. He is a regular contributor of essays and reviews on historical themes for Dublin Review of Books.
PAPERBACK FEBRUARY 2019 €19.95 / £17.99 9781785372254 272 pages 234 x 156 mm
MERRION PRESS
New Title • hISTOry
FOrgINg The bOrder dONegaL aNd derry IN TImeS OF revOLuTION, 1911–1925
Okan Ozseker Donegal was the bastion of Home Rule conservative nationalism during the tumultuous period 1911–25, while County Derry was a stronghold of hard-line unionism. In this time of immense political upheaval between these cultural and social majorities lay the deeply symbolic, religiously and ethnically divided, and potentially combustible, Derry City. What had once been a distinct, unified, socio-economic and cultural area (to nationalists and unionists alike) became an international frontier or borderland, overshadowed by the bitter legacy of Partition. The region was the hardest hit by the implementation of Partition, affecting all levels of society. This completely new interpretation of the history of the Irish north-west provides a fair and balanced portrait of a divided borderland and addresses key arguments in Irish history and the history of revolution, counter-revolution, feuds and state-building. Ambitious and novel in its approach, Forging the Border: Donegal and Derry in Times of Revolution, 1911–1925 fills an important gap in the literature of Irish history, and challenges long-held assumptions and beliefs about the road to partition in the north-west.
Okan Ozseker completed his PhD in History in Ulster University, Coleraine, in 2017.
PAPERBACK APRIL 2019 €19.95 / £17.99 9781788550703 272 pages 234 x 156 mm
New Title • hISTOry
The LabOur herCuLeS The IrISh CITIzeN army aNd IrISh rePubLICaNISm, 1913–23
Jeffrey Leddin The Irish Citizen Army (ICA) was born from the Dublin Lockout of 1913, when industrialist William Martin Murphy ‘locked out’ workers who refused to resign from the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, sparking one of the most dramatic industrial disputes in Irish history. Faced with threats of police brutality in response to the strike, James Connolly, James Larkin and Jack White established the ICA in the winter of 1913. By the end of March 1914, the ICA espoused republican ideology and that the ownership of Ireland was ‘vested of right in the people of Ireland’. The ICA was in the process of being totally transformed, going on to provide significant support to the IRA during the 1916 Rising. Despite Connolly’s execution and the internment of many ICA members, the ICA reorganised in 1917, subsequently developing networks for arms importation and ‘intelligence’, and later providing operative support for the War of Independence in Dublin. The most extensive survey of the movement to date, The ‘Labour Hercules’ explores the ICA’s evolution into a republican army and its legacy to the present day.
Jeffrey Leddin was awarded a PhD by the University of Limerick in 2017, where he is currently a Graduate Teaching Assistant. He was editor of volume 15 of History Studies, Ireland’s oldest post-graduate history journal.
PAPERBACK MARCH 2019 €24.95 / £21.99 9781788550741 304 pages 234 x 156 mm
New Title • hISTOry
hearINg vOICeS The hISTOry OF PSyChIaTry IN IreLaNd
brendan kelly Hearing Voices: The History of Psychiatry in Ireland is a monumental work by one of Ireland's leading psychiatrists, encompassing every psychiatric development from the Middle Ages to the present day, and examining their far-reaching social and political effects. From the ‘Glenn of Lunatics’, said to cure mental illness, to the overloaded asylums of later centuries – with more beds for the mentally ill than any other country in the world – Ireland has had an extensive and often unsettled history in the practice and perception of psychiatry. Kelly’s definitive work examines Ireland's unique relationship with conceptions of mental ill health throughout the centuries, delving into each medical breakthrough and every misuse of authority – both political and domestic – for those deemed to be ‘hearing voices’. Through fascinating archival records, Kelly writes a crisp and accessible history, evaluating everything from individual case histories to the seismic effects of the First World War, and considering the attitudes that guided treatments, spanning Brehon Law to the emerging emphasis on human rights. Hearing Voices is a marvel that affords incredible insight into Ireland's social and medical history while providing powerful observations on our current treatment of mental ill health in Ireland. Brendan Kelly is Professor of Psychiatry at Trinity College Dublin and Consultant Psychiatrist at Tallaght Hospital, Dublin. He is the author of Ada English: Patriot and Psychiatrist (Irish Academic Press, 2014).
NEW IN PAPERBACK JUNE 2019 €24.95 / £22.99 9781788550864 500 pages 247 x 186 mm
New Title • hISTOry
a CeNTury OF ServICe a hISTOry OF The IrISh NurSeS aNd mIdWIveS OrgaNISaTION, 1919–2019
mark Loughrey In February 1919, twenty nurses and midwives meeting in Dublin to discuss their poor working conditions took a historic decision to establish a trade union – the first of its kind in the world. The Irish Nurses and Midwives Organisation (INMO) now numbers 40,000 and is Ireland’s largest nurse and midwife representative association. This book examines the heady social and economic backdrop that gave birth to the INMO, putting names and faces to the founders and delving into the challenges they encountered. It details the Organisation’s conservative middle years and its recent emergence as one of the most vocal protagonists for nurses, midwives and patients in Ireland, while also exploring the vast and varied service that the Organisation provides to its members. The prospect of a nurses’ or midwives’ strike always raises concerns for patient welfare, and the book looks closely at how the INMO has negotiated this tension, most especially during the 1999 national nurses’ strike – one of the largest strikes in Irish history. A Century of Service is brought to life by a fascinating series of in-depth interviews with the INMO’s members and leaders in a story of an organisation that with talent, tact and tenacity is delivering despite the odds. Mark Loughrey trained as a general nurse at St Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin, before specialising in intensive care nursing. He currently works as a research nurse. In 2011 he was awarded a PhD scholarship by the Irish Nurses’ and Midwives’ Organisation. He graduated with a PhD in history from UCD in 2015.
HARDBACK MARCH 2019 €24.95 / 21.99 9781788550628 352 pages 234 x 156 mm
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IrISh aCademIC PreSS • merrION PreSS Tuckmill house, 10 george’s Street Newbridge, Co. kildare, Ireland T: +353 45 432 497 e: info@iap.ie | info@merrionpress.ie /IaP.merrION /IaP_merrION www.iap.ie | www.merrionpress.ie This catalogue contains a selection of our most recent titles across a range of subjects. Please visit our website for a full listing of all our books in print. ebooks - ePub & kindle editions are available for many of our titles. Our online ordering service is secure and easy to use.
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