Ireland: A social and cultural history, 1922-79

by Terence Brown

The seminal history of Ireland’s most unusual century, thoroughly updated for the new millennium. With its starting point the bloody creation of the Irish Free State in 1922, A Social and Cultural History explores how Irish identity has shifted across eighty years of unprecedented change and violence. What was the legacy of De Valera and Sinn Fein – or of remaining neutral during the Second World War? What were the effects of the establishment of a formally recognised Republic of Ireland in 1949 and thus the continued status of Northern Ireland as part of Great Britain? How has the state of virtual civil war that has existed between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland ever since altered the course of Irish history? Terence Brown evokes all the turbulent (and often confusing) events of the last century and makes sense of them, showing with skill and wit just how Irish culture escaped from W B Yeats' backward-looking Celtic Twilight towards modernity. A Social and Cultural History is a fascinating work of synthesis – and an unforgettable book.

364 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1981

Reviews

[Ronan Lyons · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a fantastic book - I read the 1981 edition but I note that at least two follow up editions (one in 2001 I think) have also been written. It's actually not written by a historian, rather an English literature academic, but regardless, it's a really good insight into two things.

Firstly, it gives a portrait of the social and cultural environment of Ireland in the 1920s and 1930s - briefly summed up as conservatism (to the point of stultifying), homogeneous, Catholic, rural and Gaelic - and how "The Emergency" (World War 2 to everyone else) paradoxically acted as a new badge of nationality, which allowed the social perception of Irishness to match actual reality (increasingly urban and similar to other European countries).

Secondly, it gives a fascinating picture of what Ireland looked like in 1980 (coincidentally the year I was born). The author talks of the huge changes that took places in Ireland in the 1960s and 1970s - something that, given the even more monumental changes that took places in the 1990s and 2000s, is easy to forget.