One of the greatest contributions of the Maynooth Studies in Local History series to broader Irish historiography has been its creation of countless individual case-studies that decouple those events from the broader national lenses through which they are traditionally written. They have provided welcome granularity and complication to a wide-range of historical periods and topics. The intimacy of the local lens allows for a focus on non-action as much as action, and on a range of non-conformities to broader trends. These two contributions are no different. The second volume of Dr Emmet O'Connor's Derry labour in the age of agitation, 1889–1923 is a history of labour without the lockout, and of Larkinism largely without Larkin.

Dr O'Connor has long been one of Ireland's finest labour historians and the two volumes of this series have allowed him to display the full breadth and depth of his expertise. The first part went up to 1906 and chronicled the initial rumblings of a labour movement in Derry. However, it is in this second part that many of the familiar players in the story of Irish labour come to the fore: here we have Larkin, the First World War and the great betrayal of republican socialism at the close of the revolution.

O'Connor emphasises the strange ambiguities of labour in Derry; no other place in Ireland so awkwardly combined activism and apathy. Larkin himself energised the moribund movement he found in the city, providing much needed zeal and organisational capacity. However, Larkinism itself failed to establish a real organisational foothold in the city. The I.T.G.W.U. was overshadowed by the British unions with whom Derry workers maintained faith, and local leadership remained broadly moderate and resisted later attempts (notably by Peadar O'Donnell) to radicalise them. O'Donnell's efforts to organise a branch of the Irish Citizen Army in Derry failed and the city's labour movement seemed like it would pass the revolutionary period in relative tranquillity. However, 1919 and 1920 were so dominated by labour that they were known as the ‘red years’. Such activity naturally heightened unionist fears of ‘Bolshevism’ and threw further fuel on Ulster's fire of political and social tensions. O'Connor's discussion of the careful management of sectarian tensions by labour leaders in the city is a highlight of the volume.

The First World War had a transformative effect on labour movements across many cities in Britain and Ireland and, as O'Connor notes, Derry was no different. The growth in shipbuilding, textiles and ancillary industries that came about as a result of the war served not only to grow Derry's unions but also provided them with valuable experience in collective bargaining. In many ways the war provided a period of prosperity in Derry albeit one artificially supported by the war economy. O'Connor's book is the clearest example yet of the value of the Maynooth local history series. Rich in detail, vast in its research and far-reaching in its insights, this is essential reading for any student of Irish labour.

Glascott Symes's detailed study of Cappoquin House in Waterford and the life of its most notable resident, Sir John Keane, represents an entirely different, although no less valuable, approach to the local study methodology. Keane is an excellent figure on which to base a biography, his life touched on many transformative aspects of Irish politics and society both before and after the revolution. He was a senator, sat on Waterford County Council and was deeply involved in the cooperative movement, all of which are dealt with in detail here. The strength of Symes's biography is his microscopic eye for detail coupled with the richness of the family and estate papers with which he worked. Numerous photographs are sprinkled through the volume while Keane's own ambivalence towards the republican project is captured perfectly through his own letters (he noted of the Anglo-Irish Treaty ‘they will soon find that peace is harder than war!’).

Symes's work is a two-hander, primarily a biography of Keane, while the final chapter engages with architecture and the restoration of Cappoquin House. This final section is perhaps the most interesting as Cappoquin House was one of the most notable examples of a big house that was burned during the revolution being restored by its original inhabitants. The fact that there are detailed records of the design process, capturing the essence of a big house, provides a powerful case study both for architectural historians and historians of the ascendancy. Meanwhile, the discussion of the compensation process has resonances far beyond building restoration and provides an insight into the much deeper processes of compensation and state rebuilding that took place in the newly independent Free State.