Wordwell – förlag

This publication presents the excavations at Rathgall, Rath East, Co. Wicklow, conducted by Barry Raftery, retired Professor of Celtic Archaeology at University College Dublin. Raftery published aspects of the site, primarily in the 1970s (Raftery 1970a; 1970b; 1971; 1972; 1973; 1975; 1976; 2004; Raftery and Henderson 1987), and was working on a comprehensive account but fell ill and passed away before he could finalize the publication or integrate the results of the specialist analysis. The present volume aims to present his work and to integrate it with these new data, augmented and expanded in a final phase of post-excavation analysis conducted between 2010 and 2013.Raftery’s voice is conserved in this as much as possible. In places, editorial comments add new information or clarifications. In other sections, his draft text is presented and juxtaposed with the discussion of alternative scenarios that emerged in the recent phase of post-excavation work. In fact, significant parts of the post-excavation analysis were finalized as part of this last phase of the publication project, including the finalization and integration of site drawings and photographsRaftery’s discussion of aspects of the site is presented as topical discussions where draft text was present in the archive. He also left a list of questions or ‘points to ponder’, and it is hoped that the work done as part of this project will provide answers to some of these.

From the voyages of the first Mesolithic colonisers to the present day, the island of Ireland has seen many new arrivals coming for many different reasons. Archaeology can provide unique insights into how people adapted to their new surroundings. Imirce: migration and Ireland through time will investigate how identities were negotiated within these new contexts.Imirce—migration, the overall theme of this programme—looks at the evidence for arrival in Ireland, alongside examples of Irish arrivals elsewhere, as a means of exploring and revealing the multiplicity of identities that have contributed—and continue to contribute—to Irish society through time. This evidence ranges from the growing body of ancient DNA evidence that is beginning to answer some lingering questions about Irish prehistoric populations to the legacy of new or introduced artefact, burial or settlement types that give us some insight into the lives of these new arrivals. Equally, such evidence has an important role in telling us about Ireland’s connections with the wider world. During the ages of exploration, colonisation and transplantations, ships crossed oceans to trade, raid or transport. Irish people were on board. The emigrations of the nineteenth century following the devastation of the Famine witnessed a population shift from Ireland to new worlds, where broader connections were forged and where the Irish diaspora expressed their identities in different contexts and emerging new communities.

Ian D'Alton has, for many decades, been regarded as one of the foremost voices detailing and capturing the Protestant experience in the Republic of Ireland. This work is a collection of his finest writing, including previously unpublished pieces.

In 1014, at the famous Battle of Clontarf, the High King of Ireland, Brian Boru, in conjunction with the provincial chiefs, defeated the colonizing Norsemen in a decisive battle which ended their efforts to conquer Ireland. At this time Clontarf was open countryside bordered by the Irish Sea. In the 1,000 years that followed, Clontarf has grown and thrived into a modern urban centre, yet tranquil and proud of its heritage. In this work, best-selling author Joe Curtis explores that history in an accessible, visual narrative, including archive photographs, postcards and records.

To tie in with the 100 year anniversary of The Great Gatsby, Gatsby: Death of an Irishman delivers a compelling and new insight into the life of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the genesis of The Great Gatsby.Fitzgerald once told a friend that ‘Gatsby started as one man I knew and then changed into myself.’ Jay Gatsby’s story is one of aspiration and reinvention, so was Fitzgerald’s. The book shows how Fitzgerald dramatized the most powerful emotional experiences of his own life in the novel; from his childhood in the Midwest, Ivy League education at Princeton, literary success in New York, partying on Long Island, and marital struggles on the French Riviera.Underpinning Scott’s brilliant, but turbulent, life was his complex, evolving and surprising relationship with his Irish heritage. Scott’s journey went from childhood shame in St. Paul at being ‘common’ Irish to a patriotic immersion in Irish literature and revolutionary politics at Princeton. But the shame never went away, reinforced when the poor boy found he could not marry the rich girl. He tried to escape it; first through his imagination as a boy, and then through self-invention as a young man, then in his writing, and throughout his adult life in alcohol.