A thought provoking analysis of Ireland’s own take on the roaring Twenties

Non-fiction: A Formative Decade: Ireland in the 1920s. Edited by Mel Farrell, Jason Knirck and Ciara Meehan. Irish Academic Press, €25. Reviewed by Dermot Bolger

At present, Irish public opinion is caught up in teasing out the best ways to reflect upon the ‘Decade of Commemoration’, the ham-fisted title that has been given to the period stretching from the 1913 Lockout to the sullen and bitter end of the Irish Civil War. Little attention is being paid to the decade that came next, when a new government had to address the post-revolutionary question of how to turn idealistic ...