State housing became an integral part of the relationship between Ireland and Great Britain from the 1880s until the early 1990s. Using research from both Irish and Westminster sources, this book shows that there was recurrent pressure for the state to intervene in housing in Ireland in a period when the "Irish Question" was the major domestic political issue. The result was that the model of subsidized state housing subsequently introduced in Britain was first developed in Ireland, as a product of the tensions of British rule. An important corollary of innovative Irish housing policy was its influence, even in a negative sense, on developments in mainland Britain. This book also examines the cultural impact of imperialism, and in particular the way in which British ideas of garden suburb housing and town planning design came significantly to reshape the Irish urban environment. Fraser not only presents hitherto unknown material, but does so in a unique interdisciplinary blend of architectural, planning, urban and socio-economic history.

Dublin has experienced great—and often astonishing—change in its 1,400 year history. It has been the largest urban center on a deeply contested island since towns first appeared west of the Irish Sea. There have been other contested cities in the European and Mediterranean world, but almost no European capital city, David Dickson maintains, has seen sharper discontinuities and reversals in its history—and these have left their mark on Dublin and its inhabitants. Dublin occupies a unique place in Irish history and the Irish imagination. To chronicle its vast and varied history is to tell the story of Ireland. David Dickson’s magisterial history brings Dublin vividly to life beginning with its medieval incarnation and progressing through the neoclassical eighteenth century, when for some it was the “Naples of the North,” to the Easter Rising that convulsed a war-weary city in 1916, to the bloody civil war that followed the handover of power by Britain, to the urban renewal efforts at the end of the millennium. He illuminates the fate of Dubliners through the centuries—clergymen and officials, merchants and land speculators, publishers and writers, and countless others—who have been shaped by, and who have helped to shape, their city. He reassesses 120 years of Anglo-Irish Union, during which Dublin remained a place where rival creeds and politics struggled for supremacy. A book as rich and diverse as its subject, Dublin reveals the intriguing story behind the making of a capital city.

Putting Ireland on trial, Jim Larkin’s verdict was damning and resolute. His words resound, shuddering towards the present day where class division and workers’ rights disputes make headlines with swelling frequency. In this pioneering collection, an exemplary list of contributors registers the radical momentum within Dublin in 1913, its effects internationally, and its paramount example in shaping political activism within Ireland to this day. The narrative of the beleaguered yet dignified workers who stood up to the greed of their Irish masters is examined, revealing the truths that were too fraught with trauma, shame and political tension to remain within popular memory. Beyond the animosity and immediate impact of the industrial dispute are its enduring lessons through the First World War, the Easter Rising, and the birth of the Irish Free State; its legacy, real and adopted, instructs the surge of activism currently witnessed, but to what effect? The Dublin Lockout, 1913 illuminates this pivotal class war in Irish history: inspiring, shocking, and the nearest thing Ireland had to a debate on the type of society that was wanted by its citizens.