Remembering and Forgetting 1916: Commemoration and Conflict in Post-Peace Process Ireland

by Richard English

Remembering and Forgetting 1916 engages with the diverse, divergent, and at times contradictory, discourses of commemoration in Ireland. It explores the complex politics of commemoration of four significant events in Irish history: the Easter Rising, the Battle of the Somme, the 1798 Rebellion, and the H-Block Hunger Strike. It asks how the commemorations of these events have become incorporated into present politics in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement. The book begins and ends with the Easter Rising. The construction of 1916 as the pivotal moment of Irish history, identity and memory has had lasting consequences for the Irish definition of political conflict and how this is defined through commemoration. In Remembering and Forgetting 1916, it is argued that the ghosts of 1916 are in many ways the ghosts of 1998. This book thus calls forth the ghosts of commemoration and examines how the ghosts of conflict and consensus are used to political ends in the present.

256 pages, Paperback

First published September 21, 2010

About the author

Richard English is a historian from Northern Ireland. He was born in Belfast in 1963. His father, Donald English (1930–1998) was a prominent Methodist preacher. He studied as an undergraduate at Keble College, Oxford, and subsequently at Keele University, where he was awarded a PhD in History. He was first employed by the Politics Department at Queen's University Belfast in 1990 and became a professor in 1999. He is currently teaching at the University of St Andrews.

Reviews

[Andy Hart · Rating 3 out of 5]

An accomplished work of importance to those working in the field, but I suspect it will confound all but the most dedicated reader. It is academic and far from accessible to the general reader.