Ferriter, Diarmaid 1972-

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FERRITER, Diarmaid 1972-

PERSONAL:

Born 1972. Education: National University of Ireland, Ph.D., 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History, St. Patrick's College, Drumcondra, Dublin 9, Republic of Ireland. E-mail—Diarmaid.Ferriter@spd.dcu.ie.

CAREER:

St. Patrick's College, Dublin, Ireland, history department, instructor. What If …, radio show, RTE Radio 1, Ireland, commentator.

WRITINGS:

A Nation of Extremes: The Pioneers of Twentieth-Century Ireland, Irish Academic Press (Portland, OR), 1999.

Lovers of Liberty?: Local Government in Twentieth-Century Ireland, National Archives of Ireland (Dublin, Ireland), 2001.

(With Colm Tólbín) The Irish Famine: A Documentary, Profile Books (London, England), 2001, Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Press (New York, NY), 2002.

The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000, Profile Books (London, England), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

A history professor at Dublin's St. Patrick's College, Diarmaid Ferriter is the author of several books of Irish history. His first publication, the 1999 work A Nation of Extremes: The Pioneers of Twentieth-Century Ireland, examines the Irish relationship to alcohol. Focusing on the teetotaler group known as Pioneers, Ferriter examines the Irish temperance movement into the context of the society as a whole, particularly as it relates to the movement for independence from England.

Teaming up with Irish writer Colm Tólbín, Ferriter brought out a study of what has become known as the Great Hunger. The Irish Famine: A Documentary, blends an impressionistic essay from Tólbín with documents ranging from letters to newspaper accounts selected by Ferriter that combine to present, as a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted, a "scholarly look" at the famine that caused over a million Irish deaths by starvation in the nineteenth century. Among these documents supplied by Ferriter is a letter from Charles Trevelyan, assistant secretary to the Treasury, who wrote to an Irish landlord in 1846 that the failure of the Irish potato crop was actually a blessing in disguise that would stem the tide of the rapidly increasing Irish population. Maurice Walsh, writing in the New Statesman, noted that Trevelyan is "the arch villain of the story of the Irish famine." Walsh found the work to be a "fresh little book that points us towards a search for new terrain." Similarly, Kevin Myers, writing in the Spectator, called The Irish Famine a "small but brilliant book" that "reaches into the heart of the most tragic period in Irish history." However, Tom Deignan, reviewing the same work for America, felt that "the documents selected by Ferriter are … fascinating and revealing," but also, "of course, very dry reading." Deignan went on the note that the book "is at its best exploring how the United States and Ireland have treated the Famine so differently."

Ferriter's The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000 is a work of political and social history that traces Irish history from Victorian times to the new millennium. Rather than adopt a strictly chronological approach to his nearly 900-page study, the author instead deals with thematic topics introduced by original documents in short chapters. According to Roy Foster, reviewing the book for the Guardian Online, such a "radical approach to organisation" runs "the risk of a certain amount of confusing bricolage." However, in Foster's opinion, this approach "works grippingly." Also, Ferriter displays his background in social history by his equal emphasis on social and political history. As Chris Edwards noted in Geographical, "culture gets as much coverage as politics and religious divisions, providing a cohesive picture of life in a partitioned country." C. D. C. Armstrong, however, writing in the Spectator, felt that if Ferriter "had confined himself to his specialization, then it would be possible to give this book a qualified welcome. Alas, his treatment of political history, and in particular of Ulster, is so deficient as to make this impossible." Foster, though, found the book to be a success on both fronts, writing that Ferriter "has read omnivorously in the new social history." Foster went on to comment that "one of Ferriter's achievements is to deal with the experience of Northern Ireland after 1920 as part of the larger Irish story," adding that the historian "is equally adept at the larger themes and implications of the country's 20th-century history and the real achievements of independence." The Transformation of Ireland 1900-2000 is, according to Foster, "a remarkable achievement."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

America, October 21, 2002, Tom Deignan, review of The Irish Famine: A Documentary.

Geographical, December, 2004, Chris Edwards, review of The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000, p. 95.

Library Journal, June 1, 2002, Robert Moore, review of The Irish Famine: A Documentary, p. 172.

New Statesman, May 21, 2001, Maurice Walsh, review of The Irish Famine, p. 58.

Publishers Weekly, May 13, 2002, review of The Irish Famine, p. 68.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 1999, review of A Nation of Extremes: The Pioneers of Twentieth-Century Ireland, p. 118.

Spectator, June 23, 2001, Kevin Myers, review of The Irish Famine, p. 43; October 30, 2004, C. D. C. Armstrong, review of The Transformation of Ireland, 1900-2000, p. 53.