Four Courts Press

Happy publication day to The Medieval Castles of Ireland by David Sweetman 🎉👏

While ‘an Englishman’s home is his castle’, in Ireland virtually all castles were built for defensive purposes. The medieval castles of Ireland traces the development of the Irish medieval castle, drawing on the research and records of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and David Sweetman’s four decades of experience in medieval archaeology. It is the most thorough and accessible book available on Irish castles with 200 original drawings and photographs. This new edition of David Sweetman’s classic monograph takes the reader from early Anglo-Norman earthworks, the great fortifications like Trim Castle, through to the ubiquitous towerhouse and, finally, the fortified houses of the Elizabethan period. This book forms a basic framework and reference from which the student and academic can progress the subject of castle studies. At the same time, its accessible contents and stunning full-colour photography provide the general reader with an understanding of the buildings that are such a distinctive and dramatic feature in the Irish landscape.

‘The last few decades have seen enormous advances in the study of castles and other defensive sites in this country. Now at last a comprehensive synthesis is available’, John Waddell, Journal of the Galway Archaeological and Historical Society.

David Sweetman (1938–2023) was head of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and Chief Archaeologist in what is now the National Monuments Service. He was a member of the Royal Irish Academy, a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries (London), and an active participant in Irish castle studies groups in Ireland, Britain and France.

Available now in all good local bookshops and on our website: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/the-medieval-castles-of-ireland 🛍️🏃‍♂️

Due to huge popular demand, "EMERALD NIGHTINGALES - Irish Nurses in the NHS", is being repeated on RTE One again tonight.

This is a documentary which draws on the wider oral history project of the authors of one of our bestselling books Irish Nurses in the NHS: An oral history and tells the story of the many young Irish women who travelled to England in search of opportunity as nurses, forming an important chapter in Ireland’s migration history, and in the foundation and prosperity of the NHS in the United Kingdom.

For full details of the book see: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2025/irish-nurses-in-the-nhs


Irish Nurses in the NHS: An oral history has now sold almost 8,000 copies …


“It is estimated that by the early 1960s. 30,000 Irish-born nurses were working across the NHS, which constituted around 12% of all nursing staff. A decade later, in the early 1970s, 30 percent of NHS nurses were Irish … These women have become known as ‘the Emerald Nightingales’ and Irish nurses have featured in programmes such as Call the Midwife, Holby City, Angels and Coronation Street. They truly became part of the fabric of life in Britain.”

A new episode of the Irish History Podcast has just gone live and we’re very excited about it …

In this episode, Pádraig Lenihan, author of Siege in Ireland 1641-53, is interviewed by podcast host Fin Dwyer. They have a fascinating chat about the brutal reality of siege warfare in 17th-century Ireland.

The podcast is available on most streaming services (Spotify, Acast and Apple), so go have a listen now! 🏃

Pádraig’s book is also available to buy from all good local bookshops and the Four Courts Press website.

"A fresh look at an elite woman who built a life on her own terms." We couldn't have said it better ourselves 🤩

You won't want to miss this launch & talk for Bernadette Cunningham's fantastic new book, English Countess, Irish Earl
The Social World of Frances, Countess of Clanricard, 1567–1632

Book launch on Frances Walsingham, wife of Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde who built Portumna Castle 🏰✨

Spies, poets, rebels, and a romance that defied the odds... join us for an afternoon of history and intrigue!

We are thrilled to invite you to the launch and talk of English Countess, Irish Earl: The Social World of Frances, Countess of Clanricard, 1567–1632 by the esteemed Bernadette Cunningham. 📖🕊️

The Details

When: Sunday, 24th May 🕓 Time: 4:00 PM
Where: Portumna Castle Gallery

The Story

Frances Walsingham was more than just a "surviving daughter" or a wife to famous men. This is the story of her 30-year partnership with Richard Burke, Earl of Clanricard—spanning grand manor houses, blended families, and the complex politics of England and Ireland.

A fresh look at an elite woman who built a life on her own terms. ✨

The Author

Bernadette Cunningham is a retired librarian based in Dublin. She has published widely on early modern Ireland and is the author of numerous books, including The Annals of the Four Masters: Irish History, Kingship and Society in the Early Seventeenth Century (Four Courts Press, 2014). She is a former winner of the Irish Historical Research Prize awarded by the National University of Ireland.

Are we suuuure no inspiration was taken from Four Courts Press jackets for these 2026 Met Gala looks? 🤔🤭 (just kidding)

Irish MEP, Nina Carberry, presented Pope Leo XIV with a copy of National Hunt and Point-to-Point Racing in Ireland at the EPP Group-European Parliament Study Day in the Vatican.

This fantastic book was written by the talented Frances Nolan. If you haven't already got your hands on a copy of her book, you definitely should!

📗https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2025/a-history-of-national-hunt-and-point-to-point-racing-in-ireland

©️Vatican Media

We are delighted to be launching ‘English Countess, Irish Earl: The Social World of Frances, Countess of Clanricard 1567-1603’ by historian Bernadette Cunningham this coming Thursday, April 30th in the bookshop at 6pm.
This fascinating book looks at the life of English Countess, Frances Walsingham.
Her third marriage to the Irishman Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clonricard (near Portumna, Co.Galway) surprised many and this book is a look at the social and political ramifications of this very unusual but highly successful partnership and it gives us a keen insight into the Ireland of the Elizabethan period. Guest speaker on the night is Marie-Louise Coolahan, Professor of English at the University of Galway and all are welcome.

ANOTHER new book has just hit the shelves ‼️📖

Welcome Gothic: Building Castles in post-Union Ireland by Judith Hill.

Castles speak. Especially in an age when they are no longer necessary. The Act of Union of 1800, which brought Ireland into closer association with Britain, challenged the status of Irish landed proprietors, and not a few responded by building castles. In Gothic: building castles in post-Union Ireland Judith Hill explores the projects of two Irish proprietors: the Burys, later Lord and Lady Charleville, who commissioned Francis Johnston, then Ireland’s most important architect, to design Charleville Castle; and Lawrence Parsons, later 2nd earl of Rosse, who re-imagined seventeenth-century Parsonstown House as early nineteenth-century Birr Castle.

Architecturally the castles belong to Georgian Gothic, a style that in Britain is overshadowed by later nineteenth-century Gothic and is largely overlooked in Ireland. In this fascinating new book Judith Hill investigates Georgian Gothic in its own terms as both a British and Irish phenomenon, demonstrating how antiquarian understanding, associative thinking, awareness of family pedigree and historicised design ideas resulted in a uniquely Irish response to the Gothic revival.

Using the ample surviving archives related to both families, she argues that these architecturally original and significant castles eloquently expressed their builders’ political and social concerns, making them artefacts of cultural unionism.

Judith Hill is an architectural historian and writer. Among her books are Lady Gregory: An Irish Life (2005), Irish Public Sculpture (1998) and The Building of Limerick (1991).

📚 Available in all good local bookshops and on the Four Courts Press website: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/gothic

There's a brand new book on the shelves by author and former winner of the National University of Ireland's Irish Historical Research Prize, Bernadette Cunningham 🥂🎉📗

English Countess, Irish Earl is a fascinating read on Frances Walsingham who was the only surviving daughter of an Elizabethan secretary of state, Sir Francis Walsingham. In modern times Frances has enjoyed numerous cameo appearances in books about prominent individuals in Tudor and early Stuart court society. There have been many studies of the careers of her father as administrator and royal spymaster, and of each of her first two husbands, Sir Philip Sidney, a soldier and renowned poet who died tragically young, and Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, a charming and ambitious military leader who overstepped his role and paid with his life. Although she lived in a succession of patriarchal households, in a world where even elite women were regarded as legally and socially inferior to men, her story can be told.

When she married for a third time in 1603, her choice of an Irishman, Richard Burke, fourth earl of Clanricard, surprised seasoned court observers. Focussing on this English countess and the Irishman with whom she spent the second half of her life, this book offers new perspectives not just on the social and political networks that they cultivated and on which they relied, but also on wider aspects of English–Irish relationships in the early modern era. Theirs is a multi-faceted story of contrasting backgrounds, interlinked elite social networks, their building of new manor houses at Tonbridge in Kent and at Portumna in east Galway, their management of extensive landed estates in two countries, their position as Catholics (one a convert) in a Protestant state, the blended family they reared, and their own enduring relationship over three decades in the early Stuart era.

Available to buy NOW from all good local bookshops and on the Four Courts Press website: https://www.fourcourtspress.ie/books/2026/english-countess-irish-earl