Shell-shocked British army veterans in Ireland, 1918–39. By Michael Robinson. Pp xiv, 253. Manchester: Manchester University Press. 2020. £80

Faced with such source-related problems, Michael Robinson has done an outstanding service both to twentieth-century Irish history and to medical military history more widely in his study of shell-shocked British army veterans in Ireland between 1918 and 1939. Dealing with around 25,000 discharges fo...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Irish Historical Studies 2021, Vol.45 (167), p.150-151
Main Author: Grayson, Richard S.
Format: Review
Language:English
Subjects:
Armed forces
Disability
Employment
Irish history
Mental disorders
Military history
Military personnel
Reviews and short notices
Stereotypes
War
World War I
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:Faced with such source-related problems, Michael Robinson has done an outstanding service both to twentieth-century Irish history and to medical military history more widely in his study of shell-shocked British army veterans in Ireland between 1918 and 1939. Dealing with around 25,000 discharges for mental disorders among Irish men in the British army, Robinson locates his argument within a First World War British stereotype of Irish soldiers that they were ‘volatile and susceptible to mental illness’. Robinson makes the point, rightly, that his extension of the analysis of shell shock up to the outbreak of the Second World War provides a valuable innovation in this book, with some past work not going far beyond the early 1920s by which point the basis of the treatment of shell shock had been established.
ISSN:0021-1214
2056-4139
DOI:10.1017/ihs.2021.17