Seamus O’Malley: Irish Culture and The People: Populism and its Discontents. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022.

The nation and nationalism are often central in analyses of modern Irish culture. O’Malley’s timely and innovative study challenges that dominance by highlighting the uses of the related, but distinct concept of the ‘Irish People’ in the discourse of key literary and political figures. Populism remains less theorized than nationalism, and discussions of the phenomenon are often dismissive of their subject. O’Malley, however, takes populism seriously and opens his monograph with a useful synthesis of relevant scholarship. Instead of trying to pin down an elusive ideology that would unite left- and right-wing varieties of populism, he follows Kazin and Laclau, who define populism as a language or a “mode of address rather than a set of principles”. For Laclau, populism emerges whenever a variety of grievances that remain ignored by those in power coalesce in a rhetorical rejection of elites. O’Malley proceeds to show how Ireland was a breeding ground for populism during the long nineteenth century, as all manner of discontent led to systematic denunciations of British rule on behalf of ‘the People of Ireland.’ O’Connell thus redirected demands for Catholic emancipation into his campaign for Repeal, while Parnell later harnessed the energies of the Land League for his Home Rule programme.