Until recently the military record of Belfast nationalists inWorld War One was a part of this City’s hidden history. The revised edition of this book seeks to assist the renewed and growing interest in this important part of nationalist history that lay for decades in the shaded margins of contemporary historical events.New political circumstances in our society have made it easier to address the questions of why so many young nationalist men of that time enlisted in regiments of t...

After the fall of France in May 1940, the British Expeditionary Force was miraculously evacuated from Dunkirk. Britain now stood alone to face Hitler’s inevitable invasion attempt. For the German army to land across the channel, Hitler needed mastery of the skies-the Royal Air Force would have to be broken. So every day throughout the summer, German bombers pounded the RAF air bases in the southern counties. Greatly outnumbered by the Luftwaffe, the pilots of RAF Fighter Command scrambled ...

In December 1943, a top secret contract (E.24/43) was awarded to Miles Aircraft. The contract was to build the world's first supersonic jet capable of 1000mph. The only reliable source of data on supersonic objects came from the Armament Research Dept and their wind tunnel tests on ammunition. From this, Miles developed an exceptionally thin-winged, bullet-shaped aircraft. the research was inexplicably passed to the Americans in 1944. By December 1945, one prototype was vi...

?Ireland's War of Independence generated a wealth of published material but very little from a British perspective. Yet many British servicemen left accounts of their time in Ireland from 1918 to 1921. They describe military operations, the IRA, the Irish, the actions of their own forces, morale and relationships with local communities. There is Brigadier Vinden's strange tale of a drinking session with Michael Collins and humour in the sending of Gaelic-speaking Highlanders into a public ...

From the first prehistoric inhabitants of the island to the St Andrews Agreement and decommissioning of IRA weapons, this uniquely concise account of Ireland and its people reveals how differing interpretations of history, ancient and modern, have influenced modern Irish society. Combining factual information with a critical approach, Coohill covers all the key events, including the Great Famine, Home Rule, and the Good Friday Agreement.Updated with two new chapters expanding the d...

The name the Romans gave to Ireland was Hibernia, which means 'Land of Winter', and cold feet may have been a factor in their decision to leave the Irish to their own devices. The weather is our main topic of conversation and has done its bit in shaping our character. This lively overview shines a light on incidents when the weather – generally bad – changed the course of Ireland's history. Along the way it takes in those years – and there were quite a few – when the sun really didn't shin...

Frank O'Connor's acclaimed autobiography, now in one volumeWhen Frank O'Connor was born, his parents—Minnie O'Connor, a former maid raised in an orphanage, and Michael O'Donovan, a veteran of the Boer War and the drummer in a local brass-and-reed band—lived above a sweet-and-tobacco shop in Cork, Ireland. The young family soon moved, however, to a two-room cottage at the top of Blarney Street, a lane that originates, as O'Connor so vividly describes it, "near the ri...

On Another Man's Wound, O'Malley's account of his experiences during Ireland's War of Independence, was first published to instant acclaim in 1936 and was followed by his account of his experiences in the Civil War in The Singing Flame. O'Malley had reported directly to Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy during the War of Independence and was appointed OC of the Second Southern Division, the second largest division of the IRA. When the Treaty with Britain was signed on 6 December 1921, di...

Medieval Ireland – The Enduring Tradition, the first instalment in the New Gill History of Ireland series, offers an overview of Irish history from the coming of Christianity in the fifth century to the Reformation in the sixteenth, concentrating on Ireland's cultural and social life and highlighting Irish society's inherent stability in an very unstable period. Such a broad survey reveals features otherwise not easily detected. For all the complexity of political developments, Irish socie...

Why do men abduct women? Are their motives sexual, economic, or social? How crucial is the use of violence? How important is the participation of others? What are the societal consequences of abduction?Answers to these questions can usefully be found in a historical case study of abductions as they occurred in Ireland between 1700 and 1850.Forcibly Without Her Consent describes in detail how abduction was a largely communally-sanctioned exercise in male violence ag...

The struggle between Catholic and Protestant has shaped Irish history since the Reformation, with tragic consequences up to the present day. But how do Catholics and Protestants in Ireland see each other? And how do they view their own communities and what these communities stand for? Tracing the history of religious identities in Ireland over the last three centuries, Marianne Elliott argues that these two questions are inextricably linked and that the identity of both Catholics and Prote...

The interior of the old Ford armoured car stank of sweat, blood and acrid smoke. Pat's eyes desperately struggled to focus in the gloom of the biting cordite fog …On 15 September 1961, Trooper Patrick Mullins was posted missing after the bloody ambush of an Irish UN convoy in a suburb of Elisabethville in the Katanga province of the Congo. The circumstances of that fateful day have remained shrouded in confusion and contradiction for five decades – until now. Missing in Action reveals for ...