When this book was originally published in 1960 no full-length study of the Parnell ‘split’ had been made, despite it being such a landmark in Irish history. The book treats the eleven months between the verdict on the O’Shea divorce case the death of Parnell as a dramatic unity. This was the first modern work to provide a connected account of such neglected episodes as the ‘Boulogne negotiations’ and Parnell’s final campaign in Ireland. The crisis was a crisis for English liberalism as we...

In this masterly biography, F.S.L. Lyons tackles the life and times of one of the greatest Irish statesmen of modern times. One of modern Irish biography's great triumphs, Charles Stewart Parnell has never been approached or surpassed. Charles Stewart Parnell, an enigmatic, icy aristocrat, was the unlikely and unchallenged leader of Irish nationalism from the mid-1870s, in its early heroic phase. Without him, Home Rule would not have become the formidable cause that it was. Daniel O'Connel...

During a Biblical seven years in the middle of the nineteenth century, Ireland experienced the worst disaster a nation could suffer. Fully a quarter of its citizens either perished from starvation or emigrated, with so many dying en route that it was said, "you can walk dry shod to America on their bodies." In this grand, sweeping narrative, Ireland''s best-known historian, Tim Pat Coogan, gives a fresh and comprehensive account of one of the darkest chapters in world history, arguing that...

Dark and foggy Victorian streets, the murderous madman, the arsenic-laced evening meal - we all think we know the realities of Victorian crime. Adrian Gray's thrilling book recounts the classic murders, by knife and poison, but it also covers much more, taking the reader into less familiar parts of Victorian life, uncovering the wicked, the vengeful, the foolish and the hopeless amongst the criminal world of the nineteenth century. Here you will encounter the women who sol...

Daniel O'Connell, often referred to as The Liberator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century. One of the most remarkable historical figures in Irish history, he campaigned for Catholic Emancipation, including the right for Catholics to sit in the Westminster Parliament, and repeal of the Act of Union which combined Great Britain and Ireland. Famous in his day as the most feared lawyer in Ireland, O'Connell tormented judges, terrorised opposing barristers, and w...

First published in 1964, Asquith was one of the most crucial and controversial of modern Prime Ministers. He was opposed with a bitterness and a violence that English politicians have not subsequently known, yet he enjoyed eight and a half years of unbroken power, and for at least the first six years of these he presided with an easy authority over the most talented government of this century. The issues which he confronted were momentous – Peers v. People, Ireland, and the Great ...

Jenkins' account of the constitutional struggle between the Liberal government of the early twentieth century and the House of Lords. The battle started with the introduction of the People's Budget of 1909 and continued through two general elections until 1911 when the Lords accepted the Parliament bill.

First published in 1984, this is the first biography of Stanley Baldwin for more than ten years, although there had been four in the preceding decade. This is strange, for Baldwin has recently begun to swim back into fashion. In part this is a function of growing nostalgia for his period of power, the 1920s and 1930s. Still more, however, it is " because Mrs Thatcher's brand of Conservative leadership has made him an object of contrasting interest in a way that Harold Macmillan's or Edward...

Antonia Fraser's Perilous Question is a dazzling re-creation of the tempestuous two-year period in Britain's history leading up to the passing of the Great Reform Bill in 1832, a narrative which at times reads like a political thriller.The era, beginning with the accession of William IV, is evoked in the novels of Trollope and Thackeray, and described by the young Charles Dickens as a cub reporter. It is lit with notable characters. The reforming heroes ar...

'The clearest, most accurate, and most up-to-date account of the Ripper murders, by one of Britain's greatest and most respected experts on the "autumn of terror" in Victorian London.'William D. Rubenstein, Professor of Modern History, University of Wales, AberystwythEngland in the 1880s was a society in transition, shedding the skin of Victorianism and moving towards a more modern age. Promiscuity, moral decline, prostitution, unemployment, poverty, police ineffic...

Eamon de Valera – 'The Long Fellow' – remains a towering presence whose shadow still falls over Irish life. The history of Ireland for much of the twentieth century is the history of de Valera.From the 1916 Rising, the troubled Treaty negotiations and the Civil War, right through to his retirement after a longer period in power than any other 20th-century leader, Eamon de Valera has both defined and divided Ireland. He was directly responsible for the Irish Constitution, Fianna Fai...

In print continuously for more than thirty years, this book is long established as a reliable and affectionate portrait of Michael Collins.First, published in 1971, its great strength is that the author was able to interview Collins' surviving contemporaries and was offered unrestricted access to personal and family material.Michael Collins: The Lost Leader has been praised by authorities such as Robert Kee and Maurice Manning and remains compulsive reading...