Month: May 2017

What’s the Use of History? A Postscript

/ Ted McCormick / 1 Comment

Having already devoted my two last posts to John Pepall's attack on "university historians", I don't wish to go on beating a dead horse. But inasmuch as I find his take on the nature of history's relevance misguided, and his understanding of history as an academic discipline factually incorrect, I am loath to leave the subject on a wholly … Continue reading What’s the Use of History? A Postscript

What’s the Use of History? Part 2

/ Ted McCormick / 6 Comments

Continued from here. For Pepall, then, the relevance of history to any member of the public is rooted explicitly, indeed exclusively, in that person's identity -- an identity conceived, moreover, in terms of birth, nation, and a kind of essential ethnic continuity ("some of what happened [in Sumer] is with me still"). Yet Pepall is at … Continue reading What’s the Use of History? Part 2

Now in Paperback: The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History

/ Ted McCormick / Leave a comment

Moderate self-promotion alert: I'm happy to say that the paperback edition of this book will be out early next month. My own very modest contribution is a chapter on Restoration Ireland (1660-1688). I'm grateful to the editor, Alvin Jackson, for inviting me to write it; having looked at this brief but decisive period of Irish history from … Continue reading Now in Paperback: The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History