1 comments about Pitt the Elder (British Lives).

1. Anyone interested in rigorously researched late XVIII century English politics will probably enjoy (and learn) from Mr. Black's book. His work about William Pitt, after just a brief, usual part of a chapter on his parents, grandparents etc., dips immediately into maneuvers, conter maneuvers and consequences of ever shifting moods within the parliament.

   Unfortunately the reader is presumed to know everything about the Seven Year War, the beginnings of America's revolution etc., as well as about England's major political parties and politicians at that time. The reader is supposed to be looking just for how Mr. Pitt and his opponents politicians handled these issues. So quite important historical events pass by as faint backgrounds.

   Although this is somewhat intended to be a biography of William Pitt, and not the history of England in the 1700's, one would look for such a towering individual as a wonderful way to see big world events through England's government eyes. Instead we get a vey narrow perspective of these events. Probably that is the way most politicians see things nowadays ...

No comments about A Double Life.

No comments about Up in the Park: The Diary of the Wife of the American Ambassador to Ireland 1977-1981.

3 comments about Phoenix: Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy: The Untold Story of the Cromwellian Invasion of Ireland.

1. Right from the start this work grips you and keeps you interested as it describes the movements by the 17th Century Parlimentarians; Monroe and Inchiquin & Co thoughout the country and also describes the sometimes uneasy alliance of the Irish Confederates (Eoin Ruatha O Neill) with the Royalists led by Ormond right to the defeat of Ormand at Rathmines in Dublin by the Parlimentarian, Michael Jones, which was indeed very welcome news for Cromwell's upon his arrival.

   Just when you think you are getting to grips with the already complex story, there are betrayals, turn-coating etc to keep you on the edge of your seat.

   A lot of light is shed on the figure of 17th Century History and for someone interested in History and fact and uninterested in emotional opinion, O Reilly, at one stage nearly had me feeling sorry for this man - though I would doubt that that had ever been his objective.

   Having grown up - and admittedly not knowing a whole about Cromwell prior to reading this book - there must have been something embedded in my psyche, as there would be with many others here, in that when anyone mentions the name, you might automatically think, "That .... Cromwell" in what he had done in Ireland in 1649/50 and the legacy he left right up to the present.

   O Reilly compares and contrasts very well the eye-witness and non-eye-witness accounts of the sieges (massacres) at Drogheda, Wexford, Ross and the rest of the New Model army's Campaign. For an Irishman it was difficult at times to hear that the only humiliation Cromwell really felt during his nine months stay in Ireland was given to him at Clonmel. So it could be dismissed that O 'Reilly - who himself, I believe hails from the lovely town of Drogheda is not out to vindicate Cromwell's actions, but he does show that Cromwell was indeed an intelligent soldier who carried out his orders to the letter. And also from the information in the book, if anyone had the idea that This New Model army were a bunch of sword swaggering morans that systematically slaughtered any moving thing in their way, one can see that he ran a very tight ship with a reference made throughout the book about his instructions to his regiments, 'that none of his troops are to steal food from local people.'

   Great book, my only criticism of it would be its lack of maps.




2. This is a remarkable attempt to revise the accepted view of Cromwell in Ireland. For Reilly, a native of Drogheda, Cromwell was an honourable soldier who did not cause the death of a single unarmed civilian in his hometown. In Reilly's account Cromwell is a reasoned, enlightened "humanitarian" who has been the victim of his enemy's black propaganda. This is a startling thesis which, if it were true, would put generations of historians to shame.

   It would be easy to ridicule Reilly's dreadful prose; his enthusiastic description of the McDonald's outlet in modern Drogheda will, unfortunately, remain with me for a very long time. Yet, the main weaknesses of this book are not stylistic, but historical. To be blunt, Cromwell: An Honourable Enemy owes more to Reilly's often expressed desire to "rehabilitate the memory of Cromwell in Ireland" than it does to any generally accepted rules of historical practice.

   The author exhibits a profound unfamiliarity with the history of the English Revolution of the mid-seventeenth century. In his mind, Cromwell was a democrat, the leader of an oppressed nation which rose up against monarchical tyranny, thereby securing freedom and liberty. This was certainly the view of a number of historians writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but it is an untenable position for anyone familiar with an undergraduate textbook written in the last fifty years. In actual fact, Cromwell was no more a democrat than Charles was a tyrant, and the English Revolution was not an expression of the popular will, but the product of a civil war fought between two small groups which were unrepresentative of the wishes of the population as a whole.

   Furthermore, Reilly has chosen to write about perhaps the most controversial period of Irish history without consulting a single book or pamphlet dating from the time of the sack of Drogheda. Instead, he bases his thesis on extracts of contemporary sources reproduced, with varying degrees of accuracy, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As such, he makes a number of serious blunders, the most important of which concerns Cromwell's letter to the House of Commons after the battle at Drogheda. The original letter does not survive but the official printed version confirms that "many inhabitants" were among those killed by Cromwell's forces at Drogheda. If this pamphlet is authentic, Reilly's thesis is in ruins. He, therefore, latches onto a nineteenth-century, pro-Cromwellian book which claimed that these words do not appear in the original pamphlet. When it was subsequently pointed out to Reilly that they do indeed appear in the pamphlet in question, he was forced to fall back on another argument from a nineteenth-century defender of Cromwell; the incriminating words must have been added without Cromwell's knowledge, possibly by the printer of the pamphlet. Yet, Reilly provides no evidence for this assertion and does not explain why the printer might have done this or how he avoided punishment for accusing Cromwell of killing civilians.

   Even among the limited range of nineteenth and twentieth-century books which he consulted,Reilly found a number of contemporary references to the slaughter of civilians at Drogheda. As such, he is forced to adopt a number of disturbing sleights of hand. He dismisses all accounts of the massacre which were not written by eyewitnesses. At first glance this is entirely reasonable, but when one considers the nature of the sacking of a town it seems churlish to discount all testimony written by individuals who spoke to eyewitnesses or survivors. For example, Reilly dismisses Anthony Wood's testimony that his brother Thomas, who served in the Cromwellian forces at Drogheda, had spoken on numerous occasions of his part in the killing of women and children in the town. Reilly denigrates Anthony Wood as a gossip, buffoon, and drunk, and suggests that we would be unwise to put much faith in him. Yet, if Anthony Wood is unreliable why does Reilly accept his description of the royalist governor of Drogheda, Sir Arthur Aston, as a reprehensible tyrant? The only logical answer is that Wood's description of Aston's character helps Reilly to explain away the fact that Cromwell's men beat his brains out with his own wooden leg after he had surrendered.

   In other words, anything which tends to lessen the enormity of Cromwell's actions at Drogheda is accepted uncritically, while any evidence which implicates him in the murder of civilians must pass the highest possible standards of proof. Reilly explains away eyewitness accounts of civilian deaths by magnifying slight inconsistencies between them and by attacking the character and motivations of the witnesses themselves. Once again, Cromwell is innocent until proven guilty while his opponents are guilty until proven innocent. Finally, having, to his satisfaction at least, demolished the evidence against Cromwell, Reilly asserts that there is no contemporary evidence for the massacre of civilians at Drogheda. At times one cannot but feel something approaching admiration for Reilly's ability to deal from the bottom of the deck, but one cannot get away from the fact that he has done too little research to support his extravagant claims. He is completely unaware of John Evelyn's diary entry for 15 September 1649 which tells how he received "news of Drogheda being taken by the Rebells and all put to the sword." Neither is he familiar with a report in a newspaper named Mercurius Elencticus, dated 15 October 1649, which tells how the Cromwellians at Drogheda "possessed themselves of the Towne, and used all crueltie imaginable upon the besieged, as well inhabitants as others, sparing neither women nor children." Had Reilly been aware of these sources he would, undoubtedly, have found some grounds to dismiss them, but when they are read in conjunction with the numerous other accounts of civilians deaths at Drogheda there can be no doubt about what happened in that town in September 1649. This is, in short, a painfully bad book.

   Jason Mc Elligott, St John's College, Cambridge.




3. This book is an endless string of special pleading on behalf of Oliver Cromwell whose own letters betray him as someone who believed that the killing of Catholic non-combatants "gave glory to God."
   
   On the one hand, Mr. Reilly reveals himself as thoroughly incapable of sifting and weighing historical sources. On the other hand, he does provide a pretty thorough summary of the main arguments of several generations of Cromwell apologists. This fact makes the book as useful for teaching logic and historical reasoning as it is useless for studying Cromwell's Irish Campaign.

1 comments about The Great Man: Sir Robert Walpole: Scoundrel, Genius and Britain's First Prime Minister.

1. The author's style is so casual and "chatty" that the overall work lacks a feeling of authority. It's clearly well-researched so the presentational failings are keenly felt.

No comments about The Best Years of Their Lives: The National Service Experience 1945-1963.

1 comments about Last Dance at the Hotel Kempinski: Creating a Life in the Shadow of History.

1. Hirsch's account of growing up German Jewish in England is wonderful - while his story is often laugh out loud funny, it remains a thoughtful exploration of the repercussions of the Holocaust and the pain in growing up with a difficult father. After Hirsch sets out on adulthood, his own story is not as compelling, but his encounters with elderly Holocaust survivors, as well as his attempts to come to terms with his father, are still fascinating.

No comments about Lionheart and Lackland: King Richard, King John and the Wars of Conquest.

1 comments about Hazel: A Life of Lady Lavery, 1880-1935.

1. Ms. McCoole does a wonderful job in accurately portraying the life of Hazel Lavery. She has gone to great lengths to uncover the truth about her relationships with historical figures, one being the Irish icon Michael Collins. What many people may not realize is that Hazel was a painter herself before she met her famous husband, John Lavery. Hazel's story from the suburbs of Chicago to the face on the Irish pound note is a truly enjoyable read.

2 comments about Radical Prince: The Practical Vision of the Prince of Wales.

1. This is in outstanding piece of work! It has become one of my books of the year.
   
   Radical Prince is an exploration of an array of exceedingly important ideas, seen through the lens of the life and work of the Prince of Wales. Misunderstood by many, the Prince has already made major contributions in a number of different fields. From an early age, he has dedicated his life to the betterment of humanity.
   
   Many outstanding teachers have gravitated towards him. Not so much because he is a Prince, but because of his inner spiritual Being.
   
   It is difficult to imagine anyone other than David Lorimer - the former director of the Scientific and Medical Network - being able to write this book, which needed forays into so many different areas of our existence: health, ecology, architecture, education and several others.
   
   For anyone with even a passing interest in a broader view of our lives and our place in the Universe, this is a "Must read."



2. He is a prince of the new paradigm. Reactions to Britain's Prince Charles are often extreme, representing a profound division not only about social and cultural values, or even about the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world-but also about our deepest worldviews, about the very nature of reality itself.
   
   Charles is not merely a radical prince, he is also a radical philosopher, and he uses his role and status to address a wide range of issues-including ecological, agricultural, architectural, medical, economic, educational, and religious. He has made it his business to stay abreast of the key challenges in each of these domains, and he is not shy about speaking out to support worthwhile causes in the face of overwhelming social and corporate pressures.
   
   For many years, I've been aware of Charles' outspoken views on architecture and the environment, and sensed his passion for beauty and balance in our lives and how we fit into the rest of nature. However, until I read David Lorimer's Radical Prince, I was not aware just how deeply committed the Prince of Wales is to what is nothing less than a multi-faceted challenge to the dominant paradigm. Like any insightful and "radical" philosopher who questions worldviews, Charles sees that the root cause of the malaise is ultimately metaphysical.
   
   What is needed now, perhaps more than ever, is a radical revisioning of what it means to be human, inextricably rooted in an ecological matrix of physical and spiritual processes. In short, Charles challenges the currently dominant metaphysical notion, which underlies most of modern science and society, that the ultimate nature of reality is purely physical stuff-nothing but purposeless "atoms in the void." This materialist assumption is not only philosophically meaningless, it is also extremely dangerous socially, psychologically, and spiritually. And, paradoxically, materialism also poses a severe threat to matter itself-to our bodies-not just to mind, soul, and spirit.
   
   Why is materialism "meaningless"? The short answer: If it were true, there would be no possibility for any meaning whatsoever. A slightly longer answer is that materialism harbors a self-destructive contradiction. The only reason materialism exists as a worldview is because beings with consciousness invented it. However, the indisputable fact of consciousness is precisely what materialism is utterly at a loss to explain. In the absence of an explanation for consciousness, materialism must insert a miracle to account for mind emerging from wholly mindless matter. But miracles are precisely what materialism denies are possible. In a nutshell, the problem is this: In order to be true, materialism must be false! Philosophically, that's a real problem.
   
   This is what I explore in Radical Nature and Radical Knowing. And whereas I show how the philosophy of "radical naturalism" offers an alternative that includes and honors both matter and spirit, Lorimer's Radical Prince (and Charles' own writing) spells out in clear detail the dangerous and even disastrous consequences of a paradigmatic denial of a more-than-physical world. But beyond that: We see a prince ceaselessly enacting a radically different worldview.
   
   Lorimer skillfully takes us into the heart and soul of this controversial prince, and shows us why Charles is "radical" in three important ways. "First, he insists that we need to rediscover our roots in a living tradition in order to retain a sense of meaning and direction" [as a society and as a species]. "Second, the Prince identifies the root cause of many of our current problems in the one-sided philosophy of modernism" [i.e., materialism]. Third, Charles sees that in order to redress these profound and widespread problems, "the kind of action required is that which addresses the level of causes rather than tinkering with symptoms, and that one of the best ways of demonstrating that is through example."
   
   "Through example . . ." Therein lies the potency of this book and Charles' lifework. Reading Radical Prince, we realize that Lorimer's words ring true: "The Prince is no armchair philosopher, but a man of action with a passion." We learn that he is not just a profoundly caring philosopher who has contributed new-paradigm visions and ideas to a wide spectrum of social and ecological issues, but that he is also a tireless and pragmatic "man of action," who walks his talk. The second half of the book offers readers deep insight into the motivations and actions behind the long list of charities, trusts, and foundations set up and managed by the Prince of Wales and his team.
   
   Anyone interested in the practical implications of realigning the worlds of science and spirit (in holistic medicine and food production, in integral ecology and education, in enlightened business and urban planning, not to mention consciousness studies) will benefit greatly from reading this book. If you are someone who is aware of Charles mainly as the problematic prince in the life of Princess Dianna, Lorimer's book should open your mind and heart to the depth and passion of a visionary who far transcends the superficial soundbytes and paparazzi images portrayed in the popular press.
   
   As Lorimer notes: Radical Prince Charles is a visionary monarch "ahead of his time"-a shining example of someone using the power of tradition and privilege to light the way to a brighter future for all.