Fintan O'Toole

In the United Kingdom, one is never more than 75 miles away from the coast. With this much shoreline, it's not surprising that there should be a thriving British tradition of seaside photography. American photographers may have invented street photography, but according to photographer Martin Parr, "in the U.K., we have the beach!" Here, he asserts, people can relax, be themselves and indulge in mildly eccentric British behavior. Parr has been photographing this subject for many decades, in close-ups of sun bathers, rambunctious swimmers caught mid-plunge and the eternal sandy picnic. His career, in fact, could be traced back to the 1986 publication of 'The Last Resort', which depicted the seaside resort of New Brighton, near Liverpool.

100 artworks have been chosen for this beautifully illustrated book to represent each year from 1916-2015. They trace the story of Ireland's creative output from the revolutionary period until today. The story that emerges through these 100 works is not one of artists gradually finding their place of honour in the republic. Especially in the visual arts it is, on the contrary, a story of never-ending argument, of works that are disliked, rejected, fought over, even painted over. Instead of the artists supporting the state and the state supporting the artists, it is a case of the artists challenging and upsetting the community and the community looking warily at the artists. This is what makes Irish art, at its best, so edgy, so embattled and so vital. Most artists and writers featured have been profiled in the RIA's Dictionary of Irish Biography which outlines the lives at home and overseas of prominent men and women born in Ireland, north and south, and the noteworthy Irish careers of those born outside Ireland.

Objects don't just have stories, they tell stories. But what they said to their contemporaries may be different from what they say to us. Whether it's a silver tea urn from Georgian Dublin or an illuminated page from the Book of Kells, these objects help us gain a more complex understanding of our past. Over the past two years Fintan O'Toole has chosen 100 objects, the majority of which can be found in the National Museum of Ireland, to narrate a history of the island of Ireland.

"Even though the Irish child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church have appeared steadily in the media, many children remain in peril. In The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature, Joseph Valente and Margot Gayle Backus examine modern cultural responses to child sex abuse in Ireland. Using descriptions of these scandals found in newspapers, historiographical analysis, and 20th- and 21st-century literature, Valente and Backus expose a public sphere ardently committed to Irish children's souls and piously oblivious to their physical welfare. They offer historically contextualized and psychoanalytically informed readings of scandal narratives by nine notable modern Irish authors who actively, pointedly, and persistently question Ireland's responsibilities regarding its children. Through close, critical readings, a more nuanced and troubling account emerges of how Ireland's postcolonial heritage has served to enable such abuse. The Child Sex Scandal and Modern Irish Literature refines the debates on why so many Irish children were lost by offering insight into the lived experience of both the children and those who failed them"--