Ireland - The End of an Era? by David Thornley (HQ711)

Published 1965: First Edition / Softcover / Very Good Condition

Original stiff card covers staple bound. 17 very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on the covers. Scarce! (HQ711)

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In the early 1960s Thornley published several pamphlets under the imprint of the ginger group Tuairim. In an influential paper, ‘Ireland, the end of an era?’, published in Studies (1964), he argued that recent economic change had brought Ireland to the threshold of a sweeping social, intellectual, and cultural revolution. He wrote prolifically for newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals on topical political and social issues, and on subjects of historical and political analysis. He first appeared on RTÉ television as a panellist on a discussion programme ‘The professors’. In 1966 he joined the newly launched current affairs programme ‘Division’, which soon metamorphosed into the punchy and exceedingly popular ‘Seven days’. He developed a national reputation as a probing, incisive interviewer, and an intelligent, informed, and witty commentator.

In this pioneering essay, Thornley argues persuasively that (i) the pace of social change between 1922 and 1945 has been "both positively and negatively exaggerated"; (ii) 1948-1951 saw the frame of post-revolutionary society begin to crack; and (iii)the country has seen, since the 1st economic programme, the "stirrings of those political, economic and social changes which were held back by the civil war, Sinn Fein and by the unsophistication of our social philosophy".

https://www.dib.ie/biography/thornley-david-andrew-taylor-a8545