The Easter Rising was an implosive rebellion that, although a failure, resulted in partial Irish independence in 1921 and later an Irish Republic in 1949. Within the implosion was the Liverpool Irish Volunteers whose role has been overlooked significantly by historians. This book explores in-depth the role of the Liverpool Irish Volunteers both before, during and after the Easter Rising with some interesting findings. Declan Doolin is a PhD student in Modern History at the University of Galway. This book was originally submitted by Declan as an MA thesis at Liverpool Hope University in 2020, later turning into a book in 2022.

One week in May 1916, seven Irish women became widows. When they had married their husbands they had embarked on very different lives. They married men of the establishment; one married a lecturer, two others married soldiers, another a civil servant. These women all knew each other and their lives became intertwined. For the seven women whose stories are told in Easter Widows, their husbands' interest in Irish culture, citizenship and rights became a fight for independence which at Easter 1916 took the form of military action against the British. These men were among the leaders who formed a provisional government of the Irish Republic and issued a proclamation of Irish Independence. But the Rising was defeated, and the leaders were arrested and hastily executed. Some of the widows broke under the strain of their experiences and this story tells of miscarriage and tragedy. Yet for another of the women, the execution of her husband allowed her to return from self-imposed exile, freed from the fear that her son would be taken from her by her estranged husband. This is also a story of women of power and success - some of the widows emerged from the shadows to become leaders themselves. It is a human story told against the backdrop of the years of conflict in Ireland 1916-1923 - the Rising, the War of Independence and the Civil War. Easter Widows introduces all the characters separately through the romances of these seven women - Lillie, Maud, Kathleen, Aine, Agnes, Grace, Muriel - before bringing their stories together in a cohesive narrative. These interlinking stories are clearly embedded in an authentic historical account.

The year 1916 has recently been identified as "a tipping point for the intensification of protests, riots, uprisings and even revolutions." Many of these constituted a challenge to the international pre-war order of empires, and thus collectively represent a global anti-imperial moment, which was the revolutionary counterpart to the later diplomatic attempt to construct a new world order in the so-called Wilsonian moment. Chief among such events was the Easter Rising in Ireland, an occurrence that took on worldwide significance as a challenge to the established order. This is the first collection of specialist studies that aims at interpreting the global significance of the year 1916 in the decline of empires.

Based on extensive research, Cinderella Soldiers uncovers the experiences of the Liverpool Irish Battalion during the Great War. The ethnic core of the battalion represented more than mere shamrock sentimentality: they had been raised within the Catholic Irish enclaves of the north end of the city, where they had been inculcated and nurtured in Celtic culture, traditions and nationalist politics. Throughout the nineteenth century, the Irish in Liverpool were viewed as a violent, drunken, ill-disciplined and disloyal race. These racial perceptions of the Irish continued through the Home Rule Crisis which brought Ireland to the cusp of civil war in 1914. This book offers a different account of an infantry battalion at war. It is the story of how Liverpool's Irish sons, brothers, fathers and lovers fought on the Western Front and how their families in the slums of Liverpool's north end experienced and endured the war.

A comprehensive new history of the shaping and performance of the British army during the First World War.

At Christmas 1936, Presbyterian children in New Zealand raised over £400 for an x-ray machine in a south Chinese missionary hospital. From the early 1800s, thousands of children in the British world had engaged in similar activities, raising significant amounts of money to support missionary projects world-wide. But was money the most important thing? Hugh Morrison argues that children's education was a more important motive and outcome. This is the first book-length attempt to bring together evidence from across a range of British contexts. In particular it focuses on children's literature, the impact of imperialism and nationalism, and the role of emotions.

A revelatory look at how the British royal family became divided by two world wars

"Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, in its original form--now integrally reproduced in the new edition--is a most important seminal study of an Irish community."—Conor Cruise O'Brien