Four Courts Press

06/10/2026

Happy publication day to The Irish Soldier edited by Thomas Bartlett! 🥳

This edited volume presents some thirty chapters by a team of international scholars reviewing the Irish military experience throughout the world over the past 1000 years with each chapter seeking to address the question of whether or not there was anything distinctive about ‘The Irish soldier’.

Check out our website for the full contents list 📋

About the editor: Thomas Bartlett MRIA, professor emeritus of Irish history at the University of Aberdeen, has published widely on Irish history and most recently was the general editor for the 4-volume Cambridge History of Ireland (Cambridge, 2018).

The book is available now from all good local bookshops and from the Four Courts Press website. Get it while the ink's still hot 😉🫟

https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/the-irish-soldier

02/10/2026

We are ecstatic! 🕺🥳

Huge congratulations to Four Courts Press author John Waddell and Maurice J Casey who were jointly awarded the Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction 2026.

Read all about it in the Irish The Irish Times https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/2026/10/02/maurice-j-casey-and-john-waddell-win-michel-deon-prize/

Congratulations to Maurice J Casey and John Waddell MRIA for winning the 2026 Michel Déon Prize for non-fiction, in the first joint-awarding of the prestigious prize.

Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals by Maurice J. Casey is published by Footnote Press and The Celtic World: a history by John Waddell is published by Four Courts Press.

The prize, sponsored by the Irish Foreign Ministry, was presented by Royal Irish Academy President, Daniel Carey, and by Eugene Downes, Cultural Director with the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, at a ceremony last night which also featured a lecture by the winner of the 2025 Académie française Michel Déon Prize, Fabrice Humbert.

Read more about the Michel Déon Prize ceremony on the RIA website: https://www.ria.ie/2026/10/02/maurice-j-casey-and-john-waddell-jointly-awarded-prestigious-michel-deon-prize-funded-by-the-department-of-foreign-affairs-and-trade/

📸: Professor Daniel Carey, President of the Royal Irish Academy, Maurice J Casey, joint winner of the 2026 Michel Déon Prize, John Waddell MRIA, joint winner of the 2026 Michel Déon Prize, H.E. Céline Place, Ambassador of France to Ireland and Eugene Downes, Cultural Director, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. Photo: Johnny Bambury.

29/09/2026

This Friday, a celebration of Brian Friel will be taking place at the National Library of Ireland, marking the 11th anniversary of his death. Tickets are fully booked, but you can join the waitlist, and, while you’re waiting, why not read a copy of Brian Friel: New Beginnings by Kelly Matthews?

This wonderful book reveals Friel’s struggles to be noticed as a young writer, as well as his correspondence with his first mentors, and the influences which shaped his early work.

📢 And there are only 19 copies of this book remaining (0 available in North America), so pick up a copy from our website while you can!

Buy the book: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2024/brian-friel

Join the event waitlist: https://www.nli.ie/exhibitions-events/ballybeg-goes-global

23/09/2026

Mark your calendars 🗓️🖍️

21/09/2026

New publication alert 🚨🆕

Welcome The Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliary Force, 1881-3: A short history and complete alphabetical list of the “Magpies” written by the wonderful Jim Herlihy

To augment the Royal Irish Constabulary during the Land War, 1879–82, a new auxiliary police force was raised, entitled the Royal Irish Constabulary Auxiliary Force (RICAF). In December 1881 it began recruiting candidates from Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales. Its 440 members, after a short period of training in the Curragh Military Camp in County Kildare, were armed and deployed to remote areas of the country, occupying specially adapted steel-clad and concrete-covered timber huts, with the primary mission of affording security to threatened landlords. The RICAF was disbanded in August 1883, and during its short existence suffered no casualties. This book contains an alphabetical list of the 440 men who enlisted as sub-constables in the RICAF. Each entry includes the surname, forename, registered number, birth year, native county, previous occupation, height, religion, marital status, enlistment date, by whom they were recommended, constabulary division to which they were allocated, departure date and remarks. It also includes an in-depth analysis of the RICAF by religion; age; marital status; occupations; countries and counties of birth; and allocations by constabulary divisions. The book also contains a complete list of Protection Posts and RIC Hut Stations occupied by members of the RICAF during its existence, arranged by constabulary divisions and stations, and showing the distance in miles from each constabulary district headquarters. Finally, the RIC service records of the sixteen members who saw previous service in the RICAF are provided.

Jim Herlihy, a retired member of the Garda Siochana and a co-founder of the Siochana Historical Society, has worked on these sources for many years.

The book is available to buy now from good local bookshops and our website 📘 https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2025/the-royal-irish-constabulary-auxiliary-force-1881-3

08/09/2026

New publication available now‼️📘

Welcome The Irish-Scottish World in the Middle Ages edited by Peter Crooks, David Ditchburn & Seán Duffy

Few countries in Europe boast such long-standing connections as Ireland and Scotland. The very name ‘Scotland’ testifies to this bond: to the Romans, the Scoti were the Irish, from whom the people we now call Scots took their name. Yet no previous book has been devoted entirely to examining this relationship in all its facets – political, cultural and religious. This volume explores that shared Irish–Scottish world across the full span of the Middle Ages, from c.500 to 1500. In the opening chapter, Dauvit Broun returns to the origin-myths of the Irish and Scots. Clare Stancliffe discusses the foundational role of Columcille’s monastery on Iona, while ongoing ecclesiastical associations are studied by Alex Woolf. Iona may have been where the Book of Kells was created, which Bernard Meehan revisits in the context of the early medieval artistic achievement of both countries, while their long-standing literary links are thoughtfully surveyed by Benjamin Hudson. Between Ireland and Scotland lie the Hebrides and Man whose location at the intersection of the Scottish and Irish worlds is the subject of Andrew McDonald’s analysis, while Ulster forms the focus of essays by Robin Frame and Katharine Simms, from which it emerges as both a conduit of contact and a political flashpoint. Perhaps no single episode is more emblematic of this relationship than that moment in 1315 when the Irish invited Robert Bruce’s brother Edward to be their king, its significance from a Scottish perspective considered here by Michael Penman, while Seán Duffy examines the unprecedented breadth of this Great Irish Revolt that lasted until Bruce’s death at Faughart in 1318. Michael Brown contemplates the ongoing political relationship between both countries in the 150 years that followed, and David Ditchburn pieces together the evidence for trade between them, studies boldly complemented by Martin MacGregor’s interpretation of the changing currents of Gaelic culture and identity as the Middle Ages gave way to the modern world.

https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2021/irish-scottish-world-in-the-middle-ages

04/09/2026

The last but certainly not least book to join the Maynooth Studies in Local History Series is …

Ireland’s first sanitorium: The St Ann’s Hill Hydro, County Cork, 1843–1953 By Sinéad McSweeney and Ronan Foley 🎉

The St Ann’s Hill Hydropathic Establishment, or The Hydro, was Ireland’s first and pre-eminent sanitorium. The Hydro was built in Co. Cork in 1843 and closed its doors 110 years later. Founded by Dr Richard Barter and run by three generations of his family, only ruins remain on a hill between Tower and Blarney. This book documents the Hydro’s history from a range of sources, alongside two main themes. The first focuses on the social history of the Hydro, a world of its own, reflected in its inhabitants, a spectrum of Anglo-Irish society and international visitors. It was additionally a family home and a major employer in the region. The second theme considers the Hydro as a site of medical innovation, initially via a cold-water curative regime driven by a mid-nineteenth-century craze for hydrotherapy and later in the development of a new form of Turkish bath that spread around the world.

Sinéad McSweeney is a native of Tower, Co. Cork. She recently completed a Diploma in Genealogy at University College Cork. Ronan Foley is a native of Laois and associate professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at Maynooth University.

Copies of this book are available to buy from all good local bookshops and from the Four Courts Press website
https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/irelands-first-sanitorium

04/09/2026

The FIFTH new book joining the Maynooth Studies in Local History Series is John Boyle, the Freeholder and pre-Famine Cork society by Neil Cronin 🤓✍️

John Boyle was an orphan with a difficult upbringing, impoverished and a social misfit, yet he achieved great prominence in early nineteenth-century Cork. A disruptor, he doggedly challenged the status quo. In politics, he was a vehement Vetoist and a forthright opponent of Daniel O’Connell. A lapsed Catholic in a religious age, he scorned all religions and clergymen. His nimble wit and considerable powers of oratory often plunged public gatherings into mayhem. In his journalism, he suffered frequent legal and physical admonishment, yet relentlessly championed the downtrodden and exposed the rottenness of contemporary society. An unfortunate obsession with publicising the sexual proclivities of the prosperous and prominent of Cork society has soiled his reputation. Boyle’s periodical, the Freeholder, provides a vivid chronicle of a city in transition, from wartime prosperity to post-Waterloo stagnation.

Neil Cronin has previously authored The medical profession and the exercise of power in early nineteenth-century Cork (Dublin, 2014) and Marsden Haddock and the Androides: entertainment, late Georgian Cork and the wider world (Dublin, 2023) in the Maynooth Studies in Local History series.

Copies of this book are available to buy from all good local bookshops and from the Four Courts Press website https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/john-boyle-the-freeholder-and-pre-famine-cork-society