Reviews

The Irish Ringfort Matthew Stout, 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp. 160, ISBN 1.8518.1200.X, £19.95 (hb)

A Shorter Illustrated History of Ulster Jonathan Bardon, 1996 Belfast, Blackstaff Press pp. 336, ISBN 0.8564.0586.8, £14.99 (pb)

Belfast Merchant Families in the Seventeenth Century Jean Agnew, 1996 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp. 256, ISBN 1.8518.2251.8, £25.00 (hb)

The Civil Wars in Britain and Ireland, 1638–1651 Martyn Bennett, 1997 Oxford, Blackwell pp.472, ISBN 0.6311.9154.2, £55.00 (hb); ISBN 0.6311.91550, £15.99 (pb)

Parties, Patriots and Undertakers: Parliamentary Politics in early Hanoverian Ireland Patrick Mcnally, 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp.240, ISBN 1.8518.2255.0, £30.00 (hb)

Edmund Burke: His Life and Legacy Ian Crowe (ed.), 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp. 228, ISBN 1.8518.2306.9, £35.00 (hb)

The Irish Charter Schools, 1730–1830 Kenneth Milne, 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp. 450, ISBN 1.8518.2232.1, £35.00 (hb)

The Tree of Liberty: Radicalism, Catholicism and the Construction of Irish Identity 1760–1830 Kevin Whelan, 1996 Cork, Cork University Press pp. 240, ISBN 1.8591.8060.4, £14.95 (pb)

The Royal Irish Constabulary: A Short History and Genealogical Guide Jim Herlihy, 1997 Dublin, Four Courts Press pp.256, ISBN 1.8518.2337.9, £39.50 (hb); ISBN 1.8518.2337.9, £14.95 (pb)

Unionist Politics and the Politics of Unionism since the Anglo‐Irish Agreement Fergal Cochrane, 1997 Cork, Cork University Press pp.440, ISBN 1.8591.8138.4, £45 (hb); ISBN 1.8591.2, £17.95 (pb)

Bonfires on the Hillside: An Eyewitness Account of Political Upheaval in Northern Ireland James Kelly, 1995 Belfast, Fountain Publishing pp. 229, ISBN 0.9525.5650.2, £2.95 (pb)

The New York Irish Ronald H. Bayor & Timothy J. Meagher (eds), 1996 Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press pp.744, ISBN 0.8018.5199.8, £37.00 (hb); ISBN 0.8018.5764.3, £21.50 (pb)

The Irish Experience in New York City: A Select Bibliography Ann M. Shea & Marion R. Casey, 1995 New York, New York Irish History Roundtable pp. 130, ISBN 0.8156.8121.6, US$ 29.95 (hb)

Dracula: A Norton Critical Edition Nina Auerbach & David J. Skal (eds), 1997 New York, W.W. Norton pp. 492, ISBN 0.3939.7012.4, £6.95 (pb)

The Un‐Dead: The Legend of Bram Stoker and Dracula Peter Haining & Peter Tremayne, 1997 London, Constable pp. 199, ISBN 0.0947.5430.6, £16.95 (hb)

The Mammoth Book of Dracula Stephen Jones (ed.), 1997 London, Robinson Publishing pp. 512, ISBN 1.8548.7520.5, £6.99 (pb)

James Joyce: Ulysses Vincent Sherry, 1997 Cambridge, Cambridge University Press pp. 141, ISBN 0.5214.2075.X, £19.95 (hb); ISBN 0.5214.2136.5, £7.95 (pb)

The Word According to James Joyce: Reconstructing Representation Cordell D. K. Yee, 1997 Lewisburg, Pa. Bucknell University Press/ London, Associated University Press pp. 176, ISBN 8387.5330.2, £30.00 (hb)

Damned to Fame: The Life of Samuel Beckett James Knowlson, 1996 London, Bloomsbury pp. 872, ISBN 0.7475.2719.9, £25 (hb)

Samuel Beckett: The Last Modernist Anthony Cronin, 1996 London, HarperCollins pp.645, ISBN 0.2461.3769.X, £25.00 (hb); ISNB 0.5860.9076.2, £8.99 (pb)

Beckett: The Irish Dimension Mary Junker, 1995 Dublin, Wolfhound pp. 190, ISBN 0.8632.7384.X, £27.50 (hb)

Thomas Kinsella Donatella Abbate Badin, 1996 New York, Twayne pp. 226, ISBN 0.8057.7047.X

Bearing Witness: Essays on Anglo‐Irish Literature Augustine Martin (anthony Roche ed.), 1996 Dublin, University College Dublin Press pp. 259+xx, ISBN 1 9006.21 0 1.0, £25.95 (hb); ISBN 1.9006.2102.9, £15.95 (pb)

Twentieth‐Century Irish Drama: Mirror up to Nation Christopher Murray, 1997 Manchester, Manchester University Press pp.288, ISBN 0.7190.4156.2, £35.00 (hb); ISBN 0.7190.4157.0, £12.99 (pb)

The Irish Play on the New York Stage, 1874–1966 John D. Harrington, 1997 Lexington, Ky., University Press of Kentucky pp. 179, ISBN 0.8131.2033.0, US$ 27.95 (hb)

The Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies (Vol. 2, No. 2, 1996) Osilla Bertha (ed.), 1996 Debrecen, Kossuth Lajas University Press pp. 182, ISSN 1218.7364, US$ 15.00

Die Musik Irlands im 20. Jahrhundert (Irish Music in the 20th Century) Axel Klein, 1996 Hildesheim, George Olms Verlag pp. 526, ISBN 3.4871.0196.3, with Music Examples, Bibliography, and Discography DM 98 (hb)

Here's Looking at You, Kid! Ireland goes to the pictures STEPHANIE MCBRIDE and RODDY FLYNN (eds), 1996 Dublin,Wolfhoundpp. 138, ISBN 0.8632.7556.7, £9.99 (pb)

Wilde Director, Brian Gilbert Screenplay by Julian Mitchell Samuelson/Polygram, 1997     

Book reviews

Australian Books

A. T. Yarwood: Attitudes to Non‐European Immigration (Problems in Australian History), Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 146, $2.25.

Frank Hardy: The Unlucky Australians, Thomas Nelson, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 249 + index, $4.95 (cloth), $1.95 (paper).

Stanley Brogden: Australia's Two‐Airline Policy, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 235, $5.75.

C. A. Hughes, ed.: Readings in Australian Government, University of Queensland Press, 1968, pp. 504, $6.50.

Jean Spender: Ambassador's Wife, Angus and Robertson. Sydney, 1968, pp. 207, $4.25.

Arthur Huck: The Chinese in Australia, Longmans, Melbourne, 1968, pp. 117, $4.50.

M. Revelman: Sex and Politics in Australia, Publicity Press Books, Adelaide, 1968, pp. 297, $1.35.

J. A. La Nauze, ed.: Alfred Deakin: Federated Australia: Selections from Letters to the Morning Post: 1900–1910, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 314, $7.20.

Overseas Books

Frank Parkin: Middle‐Class Radicalism: The Social Bases of the British Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 207 + vii, $4.75.

L. J. Sharpe, ed.: Voting in Cities, Macmillan, London, 1968, pp. 340, $8.80.

The Times News Team: The Black Man in Search of Power, Nelson, London, 1968, pp. 174, $4.95.

J. A. A. Stockwin: The Japanese Socialist Party and Neutralism: A Study of a Political Party and its Foreign Policy, Melbourne University Press, 1968, pp. 197 + x, $6.50.

D. A. Low, ed.: Soundings in Modern South Asian History, Australian National University Press, Canberra, 1968, pp. 399 + viii, $7.50.

Gwendolen M. Carter, Thomas Karis and Newell M. Stulyz: South Africa's Transkei: The Politics of Domestic Colonialism, London, Heinemann, 1967, pp. 184 + viii, $6.70.     

Korean unification: a solution to the challenges of an increasingly elderly population?

South Korea experienced below replacement fertility for the first time in 1983, which also marked the point from which fertility rates continued to decline over the next 20 years to reach a low of 1.2 in 2003. In spite of recent pronatalist policies, the fertility rate has remained near this level and has not increased appreciably. The reasons for sustained low fertility in South Korea are complex and solutions remain elusive. One option that has been suggested is reunification with North Korea, which could address the eventual decline in the population and mitigate the increasing proportion of the elderly. Although the conditions surrounding the German reunification experience were vastly different than what Korea will likely undergo, it is informative to look at Germany as a guide to the demographic parameters of reunification. Three projection models for 2015–2050 are presented; even the highest fertility models show that reunification will not be the answer to population restructuring already underway in South Korea as a result of sustained low fertility.     

Connecting global health interventions and lived experiences: suspending ‘normality’ at funerals in rural Tanzania

In this paper, we use the funeral space and its liminal nature as a milieu for exploring how a ‘modern’ health intervention, the mosquito bednet, is negotiated by its recipients in relation to its (non)-usage in such spaces. With a focus on sleeping arrangements at funerals and drawing on empirical data from participants living in rural southern Tanzania, we discuss how the bednet is linked to the notion of being unsympathetic to the death. Viewed as a symbol of modernity and a reflection of wealth and individual pride, the bednet becomes physically and symbolically inappropriate in the more sacred, ‘in-between’ site of the funeral. We also uncover how risk perceptions regarding malaria transmission are re-cast in funeral spaces, with socio-cultural practices and health-related behaviours being simultaneously ‘risky’ for individual mourners and reinforcing in terms of group social cohesion. As individual mourners' concerns about malaria risks are suspended, notions of pain and discomfort come to the fore as part of the mourning process and respect for the deceased.     

“Deliver Me From This Indignity!”: Cottage Hospitals,Localism and NHS Healthcare in Central England, 1948-1978

Victorian and Edwardian cottage hospitals, compared to infirmaries and workhouse institutions, have been neglected by social historians. Yet, they provided an infrastructure dedicated to localism and healthcare for the aged under the new National Health Service (NHS) after World War Two. This article focuses on two renowned Midlands cottage hospitals built in mid-Northamptonshire at Pitsford. In their patient case-histories we can engage with: dignity standards, medical regime, ward designs, staffing levels, budget provisions, and patient voices. These popular institutions had a well-deserved reputation for delivering high-quality geriatric medicine from 1948 to 1978. Human vignettes detailing the physical indignities of ageing nonetheless proliferate in the records. The longevity of these basic issues was to prove to be a recurring tension in NHS financial planning. Budget models lacked enough funds for aged patients to receive ‘stable’ bedside care. Instead, NHS accountants allocated resources to ensure the future ‘sustainability’ of the system itself. A new paradigm highlights the inherent financial contradictions and empty political promises that those needing geriatric care often experienced, and still do. Throughout, the rediscovered cottage hospital records contain important historical lessons for the present impasse about how to define, deliver and secure dignity for elderly patients in today’s NHS.