Niamh Gallagher, Ireland and the Great War. A Social and Political History.

Gallagher investigates Catholic responses to the war effort during the global conflict, doing so through a thorough analysis of the home front in Ireland. In this first ever-published social history of Ireland and the Great War, she argues that Catholic Ireland supported the British and Allied war effort, therefore questioning the anti-war picture often projected onto Catholic Ireland and challenging the view that the Great War was not Ireland’s war. In this, she distances herself from Charles Townshend (and many other historians) who contended that the Irish had adopted a ‘mental neutrality’ during the conflict (Easter 1916: The Irish Rebellion. London: Penguin Books, 2005).