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Our War: Ireland and the Great War

by  John Horne
€ 20.00

Book Details

Published by Royal Irish Academy

January 2010

Hardback

Number of pages: 336

ISBN: 9781904890508

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PDF icon David Fitzpatrick - Home front and everyday life

This is an illustrated collection of essays by leading historians on how the Great War affected Ireland. It finally provides an Irish perspective on the Great War of 1914-18 which, as has often been forgotten, saw over 200,000 Irish soldiers enlist in the British Army and over 30,000 lose their lives. It relays the experience of ordinary Irish people during the conflict and chronicles the devastating impact this war had, and still has, on Irish society. The lives and deaths of soldiers in the trenches, volunteer nurses, women, politicians and the workforce are all carefully considered. Archival letters, diaries, wills and drawings, advertisements and photographs are reproduced in this sparkling colour volume that documents the pride, fear, anxiety and sorrow felt by soldiers, nurses, sweethearts, families and friends.

Listen to the Thomas Davis Lecture series podcast that accompanies the book.

Our War, our history. Introductory lecture by John Horne

Going to war by Catriona Pennell

Soldiers of the Great War by Phillip Orr

The politics of war by Paul Bew

The survivors of war by Jane Leonard

War, work and Irish Labour by Niamh Puirséil

Fewer ladies, more women by Caitriona Clear

Homefront and everyday life by David Fitzpatrick

The Great War and Irish literature by Terence Brown

The cultural legacy of the Great War by Keith Jeffery

About the authors

John Horne

John Horne is emeritus Fellow and former Professor of Modern European History at Trinity College Dublin (until 2015), where he was also founder of the Centre for War Studies (2008-2016). He has been a Member of the Royal Irish Academy since 2004. In 2012-13 he was a Fellow of the FRIAS (Freiburg Institute for Advanced Study) and in 2015-16 was the Oliver Smithies Visiting Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He is a Leverhulme Visiting Professor at the Faculty of History, Oxford University, 2016-18. He has written extensively on modern France and the trans-national history of the Great War, including most recently (ed.) A Companion to World War One (Oxford, Blackwell-Wiley, 2010); (ed.) Vers la guerre totale: le tournant de 1914-1915 (Paris, Tallandier, 2010); and with Robert Gerwarth, War in Peace: Paramilitary Violence in Europe after the Great War (Oxford University Press, 2012). Since 2008, he has also worked on Ireland and the Great War. He organized the Thomas Davis radio lectures for RTE, published as Our War: Ireland and the Great War (Royal Irish Academy, 2008), and published (with Edward Madigan), Towards Commemoration: Ireland in War and Revolution, 1912-1923 (Royal Irish Academy, 2013). He is currently working on a history of France in the Great War.