Sir, - Dr Martin Mansergh rightly takes me to task (December 9th) for referring (December 1st) to Dorothy Macardle's The Irish Republic and P. S. O'Hegarty's A History of Ireland under the Union as "outdated". He declares that "it is naive, not to say presumptuous, to dismiss landmark works of the past or historical classics as `outdated'. "It certainly is! And it was not my intention to "dismiss" at all. The phrase I should have used, of course, is "needing to be updated".
I would not disagree with a word Dr Mansergh says about the importance and relevance of such works. In my own Arthur Griffith, I frequently refer to O'Hegarty, who knew Griffith well and participated, at a leading level, in many of the organisations founded by him. O'Hegarty's insights into the man and the period are invaluable and he wrote with such clarity and skill. His History of Ireland under the Union is indeed a "classic" and I am grateful to Dr Mansergh for the information that The Victory of Sinn Fein has been reprinted. However, new primary sources are constantly becoming available which cause, or should cause, reassessment and, to that extent, previous studies, no matter of how high a calibre, become in need of updating.
But I cannot agree with Dr Mansergh when he holds that "modern historians are subconsciously tempted to gloss over attitudes that have gone out of fashion or things that by today's standards would be regarded as politically incorrect and are often understandably concerned to bring the past into line with today's preoccupations." To paraphrase something I wrote in Arthur Griffith (p 372): any historian worth his salt will strive to judge policies and persons in relation to the times and circumstances of their time, and not of ours. Any other approach I would regard as anachronistic and a historical. - Yours, etc., Brian Maye,
Mountain View Road, Ranelagh, Dublin 6.