Bodenstown revisited is about a place of memory and pilgrimage often mentioned in history books but never before treated as a subject meriting an entire book.
Born in Ulster, John Black left Ireland for the West Indies in 1771 and never returned. Settling first in Grenada, he moved on to Trinidad in 1784 and established himself as a major slave owner and a prominent figure among the island's planter elite.
Lady Butler is a story of travel and history, of war and conflict, of Italy of the Risorgimento, of the London art world where she achieved celebrity and negotiated the difficulties of being a female artist in a male-dominated domain, and of imperial travel. Her biography reveals a figure whose perspective on war is modern, whose confidence in achieving success in the masculine field of battle art taps into contemporary debates, and whose work provokes a rethinking of the post-imperial world.
In Farrell’s darkly funny books, all sorts of things, concrete and abstract, display independent wills with which they oppose the will of human beings. Ideas, symbols, ceremonies, human communication, human bodies, lands and possessions all act as rebels or subversives to undermine the human condition. This is an important study of classic 20th century fiction by an author who died tragically in West Cork in 1979