Terence Dooley is professor of history at Maynooth University and director at the Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses and Estates. He is the author of numerous books including The Decline of the Big House in Ireland.
“Exaggeration, half-truths and self-serving narratives are unpicked
in Terence Dooley’s new book with clarity, nuance and wisdom. . . .
Dooley’s scrupulous scholarship, his deep knowledge of rural
Ireland . . . and empathy across the confessional divide makes him
the perfect chronicler of this often painful subject, where all is
not quite as it seems.”—William Laffan, Times (UK)
“In Terence Dooley’s fascinating and troubling new study, a more
nuanced picture emerges. Professor Dooley’s pioneering work with
Maynooth’s Centre for the Study of Historic Irish Houses has left
him better placed than most to describe these campaigns of
intimidation, and he does this with style, giving us what must
surely be the definitive account of the burnings. . . . Elegantly
and persuasively, he dismantles the myths surrounding the burning
of the Big House.”—Adrian Tinniswood, Daily Telegraph
"Illuminates a problematic slice of social history, repositioning
the “Troubles” of 1919-21 as a continuation of the Land War of
1879-81, and retailing with brio a story often only half-told."—Roy
Foster, Times Literary Supplement 'Best Books of 2022'
“Draws on decades of research to weave together social, political
and cultural history in a stunning portrait of a landscape and a
social milieu changed for ever.”—Caoimhe Nic Dháibhéid, Financial
Times
“An impeccably researched and thoughtfully argued gallop through
‘the tumultous history’ of Irish country houses from 1914–23, when
a fifth of them were burnt to the ground. However, it is also the
story of the fall of the ascendancy, the Irish landed
classes.”—Gareth Russell, Times (UK)
“In this important reassessment, drawing on contemporary accounts,
earlier regional studies and a wealth of recently released archive
material, Dooley argues for a much closer look at the social and
economic history of the previous 70 years.”—Maev Kennedy, Art
Newspaper
“Professor Dooley’s pioneering work with Maynooth’s Centre for the
Study of Historic Irish Houses has left him better placed than most
to describe these campaigns of intimidation, and he does this with
style, giving us what must surely be the definitive account of the
burnings. . . . Elegantly and persuasively, he dismantles the myths
surrounding the burning of the Big House.”—Adrian Tinniswood, Irish
Independent
“Terence Dooley’s Burning the Big House is indeed a valuable,
detailed, and scholarly study.”—President Michael D. Higgins
“A fascinating, insightful and scholarly study. . . . What emerges
from it is a much more complex, nuanced story than that which has
been conventionally accepted. . . . The author has made brilliant
and extensive use of primary sources. . . . He doesn’t take sides
or lapse into nostalgia for what was lost, although the
black-and-white illustrations within the text offer a tantalising
glimpse of these vanished buildings.”—John Goodall, Country
Life
“Dooley is a skilled narrator, capable of crisply exposing the
inventions of national myth. . . . It remains the great strength of
Dooley’s work that it goes beyond the pious rhetoric of heroic
struggle and ancient wrongs to expose the grim brutality that
accompanied the birth of a new nation.”—Andrew Gailey, Literary
Review
“Sheds light on the complex motivations behind the burnings. . . .
In his detailed study of the topic, Dooley delves deeper into a
more murky and controversial motive, namely: local land
agitation.”—Ciaran Moran, Irish Independent
“Comprehensive, vivid and insightful, Burning the Big House is
geared to enlarge the reader’s understanding of all the purposes
and motifs pertaining to a historically significant era.”—Patricia
Haig, Times Literary Supplement
“Burning the Big House smoulders with insight. . . . Author Terence
Dooley [is] perhaps Ireland’s foremost architectural
historian.”—Kevin Myers, Irish Independent
"A valuable reminder about conflict and danger close to home and
the passion of those who fought to take charge of their own
futures, even if the price was high."—Family Tree Magazine
“[Complicates] the narrative of the long Irish Revolution and its
often paradoxical outcome, providing an arresting new perspective
on a class and culture at the point of its extinction…Dooley
conveys the drama and trauma of the times with Bowenesque
vividness.”—Roy Foster, New Statesman
“Prof Dooley’s research offers a unique perspective on the
complexities of the conflict between the Anglo-Irish landed class
and local IRA activists and supporters.” —Maynooth University,
Irish Times
“This book is one of the most substantial contributions to the
historiography of modern Ireland to have been written in recent
decades, with its originality lying particularly in the way it
angles the history of the period to the experiences of the landed
elite without constituting merely a history of that elite.”—Philip
Bull, author of Monksgrange: Portrait of an Irish House and Family,
1769–1969
“In all the fraught history of the Irish country house there is no
more dramatic episode than that covered by this book. Professor
Dooley is the ideal person to reveal a compelling if catastrophic
story that, to date, has not received the scholarly attention it
deserves.”—Clive Aslet, author of The Story of the Country
House
“A magnificent intervention into a contested and complex historical
field. Building on decades of painstaking research, using insider
sources and new approaches, Burning the Big House offers new
understandings of issues around the political, economic and
cultural challenges faced by Ireland’s Big Houses and their owners
during the revolutionary period.”—Annie Tindley, author of Lord
Dufferin, Ireland and the British Empire
“This fascinating study presents the Big House burnings of 1920–23
as the final in a chain of economic and political catastrophes
which all but eradicated the Anglo-Irish aristocracy. Dooley’s
masterfully chosen examples illustrate the variety and complexity
of reasons for destruction.”—Eunan O’Halpin, coauthor of The Dead
of the Irish Revolution
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