Remembering 1916

Richard Grayson is Professor of Twentieth-Century History at Goldsmiths, University of London. He is the author of Belfast Boys: How Unionists and Nationalists Fought and Died Together in the First World War (2009) and edited At War with the 16th Irish Division: The Staniforth Letters, 1914-18 (2012). He has engaged widely with community groups on First World War remembrance especially the 6th Connaught Rangers Research Project. An associate member of the First World War Centenary Committee in Northern Ireland, he contributed to BBC NI's Ireland's Great War, co-edits www.irelandww1.org and chairs the Academic Advisory Group for the Digital Projects run by the Imperial War Museums. Fearghal McGarry is Reader in Irish History at Queen's University Belfast. His research focuses on modern Ireland. A new edition of his account of the rebellion, The Rising: Ireland, Easter 1916, has just been published. Rebels: Voices from the Easter Rising (2011), his edited collection of firsthand testimony by revolutionaries, has recently been adapted for the stage by Jimmy Murphy for the Abbey Theatre, and will tour the UK in 2016. His latest book is The Abbey Rebels: A Revolution, Lost (2015). He is working on a number of projects related to the 1916 centenary, including the development of a major interpretive centre at Dublin's General Post Office.

• Introduction Richard S. Grayson and Fearghal McGarry; Part I. Memory and Commemoration: 1. Making sense of memory: coming to terms with conceptualisations of historical remembrance Guy Beiner; 2. Ritual, identity and nation: when the historian becomes the high priest of commemoration Dominic Bryan; 3. 'The Irish Republic was proclaimed by poster': the politics of commemorating the Easter Rising Roisín Higgins; Part II. Narratives: 4. Instant history: 1912, 1916, 1918 David Fitzpatrick; 5. Hard service: remembering the Abbey Theatre's rebels Fearghal McGarry; 6. Beyond the Ulster Division: West Belfast members of the Ulster Volunteer Force and service in the First World War Richard S. Grayson; 7. Remembering 1916 in America: the Easter Rising's many faces, 1919–63 David Brundage; Part III. Literary and Material Cultures: 8. The rising generation and the memory of 1798 Heather L. Roberts; 9. Cultural representations of 1916 Nicholas Allen; 10. Myth, memory and material culture: remembering 1916 at the Ulster Museum William Blair; Part IV. Troubled Memories: 11. Reframing 1916 after 1969: Irish governments, a national day of reconciliation, and the politics of commemoration in the 1970s Margaret O'Callaghan; 12. New roads to the Rising: the Irish politics of commemoration since 1994 Kevin Bean; 13. Ghosts of the Somme: the state of Ulster loyalism, memory work and the 'other' 1916 Jonathan Evershed; Index.

'A timely contribution to the ongoing debate on memory and commemoration in Ireland; this authoritative collection of essays, which examines two of the most significant events in Ireland's 'decade of centenaries', is important both for scholars and for those who are currently involved in commemorative events.' Mary E. Daly, author of Sixties Ireland: Reshaping the Economy, State and Society, 1957–73