Four Courts Press Ltd

Re-Print. John Hume is regarded as the key architect of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. This book collects extracts from Hume's key speeches, articles and interviews, and adds a contextual narrative. The selected texts chronicle his entire career, covering his entry into public life in the early 1960s through the Credit Union, the Derry Housing Association, the civil rights movement, his first election to the Northern Ireland Parliament, the foundation of the SDLP, his influence over successive Irish governments, and the various initiatives aimed at ending the violence and achieving an acceptable agreement.

This carefully researched book explores the political, economic and social links between Ulster unionist leaders in Belfast and the Conservative Party in Britain, which proved decisive in obstructing the Irish Revolution.

In the early modern period Kilkenny was the largest inland town in Ireland, where several factors had come into play that enabled the growth of prosperity and a burgeoning economy. During that period the merchant elite of the town occupied a pivotal role in its development, and they would also achieve importance as agents and administrators to the earls of Ormond.

This volume presents an authoritative collection of essays on Irish, Celtic studies and folklore. Published in honour of Rionach ui Ogain, professor emeritus of Irish folklore and former director of the National Folklore Collection, its contents engage with themes that have characterized her substantial contribution to scholarship both nationally and internationally.