Our Authors
Over the many years we have been publishing genealogy related books we have built up relationships with some well-known authors. You can view their profiles below and also see any books they have contributed to that are available for sale.
A.D. McDonnell
A.P.W. Malcomson
Anthony Malcomson was educated at Campbell College, Belfast, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was awarded a PhD in history by QUB in 1970. Most of his working life was spent in the Public Record Office Northern Ireland, of which he was director from 1988 until his retirement in 1998. His publications include John Foster: The Politics of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy (Oxford, 1978), Archbishop Charles Agar: Churchmanship and Politics in Ireland, 1760-1810 (Dublin, 2002), Primate Robinson (1709-94): ‘A very tough incumbent in fine preservation’ (Belfast, 2003), Nathaniel Clements: Government and the Governing Elite in Ireland, 1725-75 (Dublin, 2005) and numerous articles essays and editions.
Allan Blackstock
Allan Blackstock was born in Belfast where, after a working in industry, he entered third level education as a mature student. After graduation, he worked for a period as an archivist in the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland and has also provided historical consultancy for various museums. He taught at Queen’s University Belfast (QUB) in the School of Modern History and the Institute of Irish Studies before joining the University of Ulster in 2002 where, in addition to conventional teaching, he has been involved in developing e-learning programmes in Irish Cultural Heritages. He was promoted to Reader in Irish Cultural Heritages in 2005. In 2001 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and in 2006 to the editorial board of the Ulster Society for Irish Historical Studies.
Angélique Day
Brenda Collins
Brenda Collins is Research Officer at the Irish Linen Centre & Lisburn Museum
Brian Barton
Brian Barton was born in Dunkineely, Co. Donegal, in 1944 and educated at Methodist College, Belfast. He graduated from Queen’s University, Belfast, in 1967, was awarded an M.A. by the University of Ulster in 1979 and a Ph.D. by Queen’s University in 1986. He has taught at the Belfast Institute, and has been Research Fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Q.U.B., and at Churchill College, Cambridge. He is currently research fellow in the Politics Department at Queen’s. He has written Broukeborough; the Making of a Prime Minister (Belfast, 1988), and the Blitz; Belfast in the War Years, (Belfast, 1989), the co-edited two volumes on contemporary Irish Politics and has recently completed ‘Northern Ireland, 1921-1951? a New Hsitory of Ireland, Vol. VIII, (Clarendon Pess, forthcoming).
Cecil J. Houston
Cecil J. Houston is professor of Geography at the University of Toronto.
D.W. Hayton
David Hayton is Professor of Early Modern Irish and British History at Queen’s University Belfast. He was previously on the staff of the History of Parliament trust, for whom he acted as principal editor of the House of Commons 1690-1715 (2002). He has published widely on Irish and British history in the period 1660-1750, and an edited collection of his essays is to appeared in 2004 as Ruling Ireland: politics, politicians and parties 1685-1742. He is one of the joint-editors of Irish Historical Studies.
David Fitzpatrick
David Fitzpatrick is an lecturer in the Department of Modern History, Trinity College, Dublin
David Hassan
David Hassan is a senior lecturer at the Universityb of Ulster Jordanstown and a member of Beannchar (Doire).
David Stevenson
David Stevenson, a senior lecturer in Scottish history at the University of Aberdeen, is a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin, and the University of Glasgow. His publications include The Scottish Revolution, 1637-1644: the Triumph of the Covenanters (winner of a Scottish Arts Council Book Award), Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Scotland, 1644-1651, and Alasdair MacColla and the highland problem in the Seventeenth Century.
Dónal McAnallen
Dónal McAnallen is an education officer at the Cardinal à Fiaich Library and a member of Club Naomh Pádraig, An Eaglais (TÃr Eoghain).
Donal McCraken
Donal McCraken is professor of History and dean of Humanities at the University of Durban-Westville in South Africa.
Donald Macraild
Donald Macraild is professor of History of the University of Ulster
Eamon Phoenix
Dr. Eamon Phoenix is Senior Lecturer in History at Stanmillis College, Belfast. A former research fellow at the Institute of Irish Studies, Queen’s University, Belfast and sometimes Archivist at St Malachy’s College, Belfast, he has published a number of scholarly articles on modern Irish history and a school textbook. H has written extensively on historical issues for the Irish Times and Irish News and is a well-known broadcaster. He is continuing research into Northern Irish Nationalism and its leadership. He is married with a young daughter.
Edith Mary Jonhston-Liik
Professor Edith Mary Johnston-Liik has an MA and PhD from the University of St Andrews and a Diploma in Education from the Queen’s University of Belfast. She was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield (1956’76), and Professor of History at Macquarie University, Sydney Australia (1976’93). Her publications included: Great Britain and Ireland: a study in Political Administration, Ireland in the Eighteenth Century, A Measure of Greatness: the Origins of the Australian Iron and Steel Industry (with G Liik and R.G. Ward), and History of the Irish Parliament 1692’1800 (six-volumes in hardback).
Eoin Magennis
Eoin Magennis is policy research manager at InterTradeIreland. He completed his Ph.D. at Queen’s university Belfast under the supervision of Peter Jupp, with whom he co-edited Crowds in Ireland.
Faye Lynsyl (Donaghy) Logue
A keen genealogist, Faye Logue was born at Red Cliffs, Victoria, Australia in 1940 and has always held a great affection for Ireland and particularly the area surrounding Strabane as both her father Samuel Alexander Donaghy, and husband, Ronnie Logue, were both born and raised within a few miles of the town. Following their marriage, in 1962, the Logues moved to North Queensland, eventually settling near Tully where they were partners in a successful banana plantation for twenty-three years prior to its sale in 1999.
Commencing genealogical research in the 1980s, following her first visit to Ireland, it was soon evident that few Tyrone records were available for research in Australia necessitating the purchasing of microfilms of relevant records, including the Strabane Morning Post.
It soon became apparent that the files of the newspaper contained significant genealogical information that deserved transcribing, and so this book came into being.
In recent years, she has been compiling databases of the registers of several churches in Leckpatrick and Donagheady parishes, some of which are now available for searching on the Internet.
Frank Thompson
Dr Frank Thompson was formerly Principal Lecturer inn History and Head of the History Department in St Mary’s College (now St mary’s University College). He has published a number of scholarly articles on the land question and politics in nineteenth-century Ulster.
Gerald O’Brien
Gerald O’Brien is the author of Anglo-Irish Politics in the Age of Grattan and Pitt (Dublin 1987), and of numerous articles on modern Irish political and social history. He lectures in History of the University of Ulster.
Gillian McClelland
Gillian McClelland graduated from Queen’s University Belfast with a BA (Hons) in Social Anthropology, and subsequently a PhD in 2000. She currently teaches at the University in the Schools of Anthropological Studies and of Sociology, Social Policy and Women’s Studies.
Ian Maxwell
Ian Maxwell is a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast, where he completed his Ph.D. on Sir Wilfred Spender in 1991. He was a Records Officer at the Public Records Office Search Room he pioneered a series of leaflets on genealogy which are now available on the Internet. Ian now works in Policy and Communication, Roads Service. He has written two books: Tracing your Ancestors in Northern Ireland (1997) and Researching Armagh Ancestors (2000).
Ian Montgomery
Ian Montgomery was historical research officer at Muckamore Abbey Hospital 2001-02 and is currently an archivist with the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland.
J. Frederick Rankin
Fred Rankin was born in Belfast and educated at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He qualified as a Pharmaceutical Chemist in 1949 and, after some years in the family business, he became Northern Ireland manager for an international chemical company, retiring in 1992.
He is a parishioner (and Honorary Treasurer) of Drumbo in the Diocese of Down and published a history of the parish in 1981. A member and one-time chairman of the Lisburn Historical Society, he has contributed to its journal; he is also chairman of the lecale Historical Society and has contributed to the Lecale Miscellany.
Fred Rankin has been secretary to the Diocesan Library Committee for many years and was actively involved in the publication of the Succession Lists of the Clergy of Connor and of Down and Dromore; for the latter he wrote short histories of each parish in the diocese. Both of these books were published by the Ulster Historical Foundation. He is a member of the Diocesan Council and is a representative of the Council on the board of Down Cathedral, in whose work he is deeply involved. He represents the diocese on the Representative Church Body and is currently the chairman of its sub-committee on Library and Archives.
J. H Andrews
J. H Andrews was born in England and educate at the universities of Cambridge and London. Since 1954 he has taught historical geography at Trinity College, Dublin, where he became a Fellow of the College in 1969 and associate professor in 1977. He is a member of the Royal Irish Academy and a past president of the Geographical Society of Ireland. Professor Andrews has published many papers on historical geography and the history of the cartography, and two books on the Ordance Survey of Ireland, History in the Ordnance Map (1974) and A Paper Landscape (1975). From 1971 to 1979 he was secretary to the editorial committee of the Atlas of Ireland published by the Royal Irish Academy, and he is currently co-editor or the Academ’s atlas of historic Irish towns.
J.P. Lynch
J.P. Lynch was born in1955 and returned to education as a mature student at Ruskin College, Oxford in 1977. He came to Belfast in 1979 where he took a BA and PhD. at Queen’s. He now works in the Institute of Lifelong Learning teaching on the Part-time degree.
Jack Magee
Jack Magee is a local historian and was a lecturer in Marketing for many years. He was formerly Marketing Manager with Bernard Hughes Ltd, Belfast. Now based in Sydney, he has drawn on his lifetime of experience in the banking industry and his detailed knowledge of local and business history to produce this definitive biography of the celebrated bap-maker and public figure.
Joe Armstrong
Joe Armstrong is Managing Editor for Ireland for international academic publishers Peter Lang (Oxford) Ltd. His previous books include Men’s Health ‘ the Common Sense Approach, Write Way to Stop Smoking, Workplace Stress in Ireland, and the NUJ and Your Rights at Work. He is honorary press officer for Irish PEN, writes monthly colomns in Reality and Face Up and provides editorial support to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions.
John Hume
John Hume was born in the Glen area of Derry in 1937 and still resides in the city today. He was educated at St Eugene’s Boys Primary School, Rosemount, and at St Columb’s College. After leaving school, John then studied History and French at St Patrick’s College, Maynooth (NUI), from which he graduated as a BA and as an MA.
At the time this Master’s thesis was written in 1964, John Hume was spearheading the ‘University for Derry’ Campaign. He had also been instrumental in establishing the Derry Housing Association in the Credit Union League of Ireland between 1964 and 1969.
By the late 1960s John Hume was a civil rights leader and in 1970 was a founder and deputy leader of the newly established Social Democratic and Labour Party leader of the newly established Social Democratic and Labour Party. He was leader of the SDLP between 1979 and 2001.
John is married to Pat and has three daughters and two sons. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1998 and in recent years has received the Martin Luther King Prize and the Mahatma Gandhi Peace Price. He also received many Honorary Doctorates in recognition of his work for peace in Northern Ireland from universities throughout the world.
John McKenna
John Mckenna is the grandson of Head Constable John Mckenna. A Civil Servant based in Belfast, he has a long-term interest in genealogy and family history. Other interests include creative writing. As a second son and in the irish tradition, he was named after his father’s father. Although born long after his grandfather had died, his interest in his RIC ancestor down the years has culminated in having A Beleaguered Station published. His current wider interest in the period of Irish covered by the memoir resulted by the memoir resulted from research conducted in order to better understand his grandfather’s experiences.
Jonathan Bardon
Jonathan Bardon was born in Dublin in 1941 but has lived and worked in Belfast since 1963. He is author of several books on Irish history, most notably A History of Ulster (1992) and, most recently, A History of Ireland in 250 episodes (2008), based on BBC Radio Ulster broadcasts. He was written radio and television historical documentaries for BBC, UTV, RTÃ and Channel 4. He was chairman of the Northern Ireland Community Relations Council between 1996 and 2002 and was awarded the OBE for services to community life in 2003.
Jonathan Bell
Jonathan Bell is Head Curator at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, where he has worked since 1976. He has published widely on the history of Irish rural society, and associated farming methods. Fieldwork has always been a key element of his work, and this has led to the collection of oral testimonies throughout Ulster and other parts of Ireland, many of which have been used in writing Ulster Farming Families (1930-1960).
Michael Cox
Michael Cox discovered the townlands of Edymore and Cavanalee fifty years ago when he installed milking machines on two farms there. After his marriage a few years later, he and his wife moved to Edymore, staying there for over twenty years. In the 1960s he started to explore the history of the townlands following the discovery of old maps of the district among the Abercorn Papers at PRONI. After moving to Scotland he continued his research during annual visits to the Strabane district. He was later persuaded by two friends, both Ulster local historians, to write down the story of the two townlands.
Michael Montgomery
Michael Montgomery is Professor Emeritus of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. For the past twenty years he has read widely in the archives and museums of Ireland, Scotland, and the U.S. to find the material for this book. His has written widely on Irish and Scottish oh his native southern United State. His most recent book is Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English (2004). He is Honorary President of the Ulster-Scots Language Society.
Myrtle Hill
Myrtle Hill is Director fo the Centre for Women’s Studies at Queen’s University Belfast. She has published widely on Irish social and religious history. Recent works include Myrtle Hill and Vivienne Pollock, Women of Ireland, Image and Experience (Belfast, 1999); Raymond Gillespie and Myrtle Hill (eds), 1798: Rebellion in County Down (Belfast, 1999); David Hempton and Myrtle Hill, Evangelical Protestantism in Ulster (London, 1922).
Neal Garnham
Dr Neal Garnham has taught history at the University of Ulster, Hertford College in Oxford, and the Queen’s University of Belfast, where he is currently a Leverhulme research Fellow. He hopes to publish a study of the role and place of football in Irish society in the near future. His own footballing career failed to progress beyond a single appearance for his primary school at centre half, and two runs out as a substitute hooker five years later.
Neil McGleenon
Dr Neil McGleenon is a native of County Armagh and retired headmaster. He is a graduate of Queen’s University, Belfast with BA in 1958, MA (Education) 1977, MA (Irish Studies) 1998, Ph.D (Politics and International Studies) 2005. He has published in the journals of Cumann Seanchais Ard Mhacha, Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Duiche Neill, British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, Durham and Newcastle Research Review. He edited The Carrickmore Tradition 1982-2002.
Patrick McWilliams
Patrick McWilliams is an Irish author, born in 1963 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Amongst his main publications is the 40-volume OS Memoirs of Ireland series and subsequent index (1990-2002).
Dr McWilliams, a former pupil of St Malachy’s College and a graduate of Queen’s University Belfast, is prominent in the administration of cue sports at higher-education level in the United Kingdom and Ireland. He is Chair of HESCP and chairs the snooker sports management group within BUCS.
Peter Collins
Peter Collins is Senior Lecturer in History at St Mary’s University College, Belfast. He is secretary of the United Irishmen Commemoration Society (UICS) in Belfast.
Peter Marson
Peter Marson was educated at Westminster City School in London and graduated in law from Trinity College, Cambridge. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. When he retired from a long career in law and business in 1990, he and his wife Ellen, who was born in Belfast, moved there and, in a career change, joined the National Trust. They worked principally at Castle Ward until, in 1994, Peter was appointed to manage Castle Coole, a house and desmesne he had fallen in love with since first seeing it. In 1998, Peter retired and took up the challenge of establishing the Lowry Corry family archive: cataloguing the enormous numbers of books, papers, letters and other private materials in the house and undertaking a long programme of research into the family’s history to add as much as possible to the extensive work carried out by the 4th Earl in his two histories.
Peter Roebuck
Peter Roebuck is the author of books and articles on British and Irish economic and social history and is Professor of History at the University of Ulster.
Philip Robinson
The author, Dr. Philip Robinson, is Head of the Collections Division at the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum, and Chairman of the Historic Buildings Council for Northern Ireland. His academic training was a geographer and cultural historian, and he has retained a particular interest in settlement and landscape history. This study of the Ulster Plantation is an expansion of his doctoral thesis on the Plantation in County Tyrone. As a specialist in urban history, he represents Northern Ireland on the RIA committee for the Irish Historic Town Atlas, and at the Folk Museum at Cultra he is responsible for the development of the open air Folk Park of re-erected vernacular buildings.
R.H. Foy
The author, Dr R H Foy, is currently Secretary of Antrim & District Historical Society and a past Chairman of the Federation for Ulster Local Studies. He has written on aspects of the history of Antrim including Dear Uncle, Bonar Thompson, the old days at Carnearney and Townlands in Ulster
Raymond Gillespie
Raymond Gillespie is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at National University of Ireland, Maynooth.
Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke is emeritus professor of anaesthetics at Queen’s University Belfast. He is author of a bicentenary History of the Royal Victoria Hospital (1997), as well as many papers on anaesthesia and historical subjects. Over the past thirty-eight years he has also compiled and or edited many books of gravestone inscriptions, published by the Ulster Historical Foundation.
Richard K. MacMaster
Richard K. MacMaster is co-editor of The Journal of Scotch-Irish Studies and co-director of The Center for Scotch-Irish Studies. He earned a B.A. and M.A. in history at Fordham University and a Ph.D. in American history at Georgetown University.
His research interests have been in eighteenth-century America: Virginia, Mennonites and other German settlers, and the Scotch-Irish. His books include The Five George Masons: Planters and Patriots of Maryland and Virginia (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1975); Conscience in Crisis: Mennonites and Other peace Churches in America 1739-1789 (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1979); and Land, Piety, Peoplehood: The Establishment of Mennonite Communities in America 1683-1790 (Scottdale PA: Herald Press, 1985).
In 1980, while teaching at James Madison University, he began The Shenandoah Valley Historical Institute to encourage study of the different ethnic and religious groups on the eighteenth-century frontier and directed an NEH-funded research project with Robert D. Mitchell, Warren Hofstra, and Klaus Wust on ‘Cultural Pluralism in the Shenandoah Valley’ in 1984-1985. He also has taught at Western Carolina University Bluffton College and Elizabethtown College and, in retirement, has been affiliated with the History department, University of Florida since 2002.
Robert K. O’Neill
Robert Keating O’Neill is Director of the John J. Burns Library and Part Time Faculty, Political Science, at Boston College, chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. He has been Burns Librarian since 1987. He holds both a PhD in History and an MA in Library Science from the University of Chicago. Previously he was Director of the Indiana historical Society Library in Indianapolis and head of Special Collections at Indiana State University, where he was also Associate professor of Library Science in the College of Arts and Sciences.
His many publications include: Irish Libraries, Museums, Archives and Genealogical Centres: A Visitors’ Guide (2002); Management of Library and Archival Security: From the Outside Looking In (1998), co-published simultaneously as Journal of Library Administration (volume 25, number 1, 1998); Ulster Libraries, Archives, Museums and Ancestral Heritage centres: A Visitors Guide (1997); and English-Language Dictionaries, 1604-1900: The Catalogue of the Warren N. and Suzanne B. Cordell Collection (1988). He co-edited The Art of the Book from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance: A Journey through a Thousand Years (2000). He has written numerous articles, reviews and prefaces.
O’Neill is a former president of the Manuscript Society (1992-1994), and the Eire Society of Boston (1995-1997). He continues to serve as a member of the board of directors of both these organisations. He also serves on the board of the Charitable Irish Society of Boston and is a past member of the boards of Bookbuilders of Boston and the Madame C.J. Walker urban Life Center, Indianapolis. He is a fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston, and a member of the Grolier Club in New York, the Club of Odd Volumes in Boston, and the Royal Dublin Society, and received the Society’s Award of Distinction.
He was honoured by the Irish and American governments for his role in the recovery of stolen Irish artefacts in 1991. In 2003 he received the Eire Society of Boston’s Gold medal and was named to Irish America magazine’s ‘Top 100 Irish Americans’. O’Neill is also the 2004 recipient of the Ambassador’s Award, established by the St Patrick’s Committee of Holyoke, Massachusetts in conjunction with the Irish Ambassador to the United States.
Roddy Hegarty
Roddy Hegarty is the Director designate of the Cardinal à Fiaich Library, a native of Strabane (TÃr Eoghain) and a member of Club an Phiarsaigh (Aontroim).
Roy Johnston
Roy Johnston on his retirement from salaried employment found himself free to indulge a lifelong musical hobby. He has been a member of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland and chair of its music and opera committee, a member of the Governors of the Linen Hall Library and of the board of Castleward Opera, and a trustee of the Grand Opera House. After some years of writing, lecturing and broadcasting on opera and musical history he wrote a dissertation on ‘Concerts in the musical life of Belfast ot 1874? for which Queen’s University awarded him a doctorate in 1966, and which he has drawn on in ‘Bunting’s Messiah’.
Sean Barden
Sean Barden is a gallery assistant in Armagh County Museum who has an avid interest in Armagh’s past.
Sean Connolly
Sean Connolly is a lecturer in the department of History, University of Ulster, Coleraine.