"Volume 1 summary: The various attempts at Home Rule for Ireland ultimately culminated in the Third Home Rule Bill which directly contributed to the creation of the Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF spanned not just the geographic rural and urban Protestant Ulster from the Atlantic coast of Donegal to the shipyards of east Belfast but also the diverse political ideals of individuals. By the outbreak of the Great War it had become an organisation of armed volunteers, the first to use motorcycle despatch riders and motor transport on a large scale and the first to use armoured lorries in street patrols. It was also one of the first in the twentieth century to recognise the varied role for women in warfare against a backdrop of a rise in women's suffrage in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. The importance, role and significance of the existence of the UVF are well summed up in Sir Winston Churchill's book, Great Contemporaries, that 'if Ulster had confined herself simply to constitutional agitation, it is extremely improbable that she would have escaped forcible inclusion in a Dublin Parliament.' This book tells both the story of the Home Rule period and the Ulster Volunteer Force formed in response to the Home Rule crises. An important period in Irish politics and history this book draws on a number of first-hand accounts, contemporary newspaper reports, UVF papers and records from the Somme Museum. It is illustrated by a number of images never before published"--Publisher description.

This book is a major history account of the 10th (Irish) Division during World War I. Unlike the 36th (Ulster) and the 16th (Irish) Divisions, which have been well served by historians in recent years, the history of the 10th has been largely overlooked. The book emphatically rectifies this long oversight and, in so doing, brings to completion the complicated story of the Irish divisions during World War I. Using newly available sources, regimental medal rolls, newspaper reports, obituaries, census returns, and Commonwealth War Graves records, the book subjects the 10th Division to a ground-breaking analysis, unearthing an unprecedented amount of evidence crucial to understanding its formation, composition, and battle history, from Gallipoli to Palestine. Fascinating and vital details - concerning ethnicity, age, religion, employment, and social background - confound expectations and reveal that the 10th Division was neither as Irish nor as nationalist as previously believed. The research sheds new light on the effects of regimental morale and discipline on combat performance. All told, the book can lay legitimate claim to being the definitive account of the 10th (Irish) Division and will be the benchmark against which future histories of the Division are written. [Subject: Military History, Irish Studies, World War I]

This pioneering study, originally published in 1992, remains the definitive history of the 16th (Irish) Division in the First World War. This year, the centenary of the outbreak of the war, sees its timely re-issue as the Irishmen who fought in that war re-enter the national memory after decades of indifference and hostility. Nearly 135,000 Irishmen volunteered and no less than three Irish divisions - the 10th (Irish), 16th (Irish) and 36th (Ulster) - were formed from Irishmen, Catholic and Protestant, who responded to Lord Kitchener's call to arms. An estimated 35,000 Irish-born soldiers were killed before the armistice came in November 1918. Over 4,000 of those died with the 16th (Irish) Division. In Ireland's Unknown Soldiers Terence Denman tells the powerful story of the Irish Division whose largely Catholic, nationalist composition encapsulated the complexities that surrounded Irish involvement in First World War. Denman recalls the sombre, compelling story of the lesser-known 16th (Irish) Division on the Western Front: gassed at Hulluch, victorious at Ginchy and Guillemont, the Division suffered heavy casualties in the carnage at the Somme, Messines Ridge and Passchendaele, before its final destruction in March 1918. Denman brings to life the extraordinary resilience and camaraderie of the men in the trenches and the tragedy of the thousands who made the ultimate sacrifice. This was the last chapter in the long history of the Catholic Irish soldier's contribution to the British army.

Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme was revived by the Abbey Theatre, Dublin in 1994 as part of an acknowledgement of the peace process. The production was subsequently taken to the Edinburgh Festival in 1995 and opened at the Royal Shakespeare Company's Barbican Theatre, London, in March 1996.

Heroism, propaganda, unionism, and violence in Ireland during the Great War.