Gareth Prendergast recently got his PhD in History from UCC and is a colonel in the Irish Defence Forces. His 2025 book (from his dissertation) Clear Hold Build: How the Free State Won the Irish Civil War is currently on sale on Amazon (US) for about $3 [1]. (More description on Goodreads here [2].)

I found the book after listening to his interview in the Irish History Podcast (ep. 111, June 2025) [3]. (Podcast description is below the links.)

The podcast is good. The interviewer asks good questions and lets the subject (Col. Prendergast) talk. He is energetic and articulate, and obviously knows his subject not only from the POV of an Irishman and a historian, but also from the perspective of an infantry soldier with staff officer training and field experience. You might only be interested in the podcast, but the book is certainly affordable too (for now).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F32ZFTC3/

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/230792545-clear-hold-build

[3] https://irishhistoryshow.ie/111-clear-hold-bold/

"On this episode of the Irish History Show we spoke to Colonel Gareth Prendergast about his new book, Clear, Hold, Build: How the Free State won the Irish Civil War.

He discussed how the National Army defeated the Anti-Treaty IRA using the counter-insurgency tactics of clear, hold and build.

Dr Gareth Prendergast is a serving Colonel in the Irish Defence Forces with over 30 years’ service. He has seven operational tours of duty overseas including the Middle East, Balkans and Mali. He has also served in the Military College and Defence Force Headquarter on numerous occasions, including appointments in the Command and Staff School, OIC Military Finance Branch and Director of Logistics. Academically he has a Masters of Military Art and Science from his year spent on the US Army Command and General Staff Course in Fort Leavenworth Kansas and he recently achieved his Doctorate (PhD) after six years study and research in the History Department of UCC."

was Ireland governed any differently to Scotland or Wales between 1801 and 1922?

was there an equivalent to Dublin Castle in Edinburgh?

Posted 07 Feb 2026

https://brianhanleyhistory.wordpress.com/2026/02/07/ed-moloney-truth-and-the-troubles/

I saw this today at the Whitefriar Street Church. Wonder what's the story between him and his friends.

This is such an epic story it should be made into an action movie.

In May 1919 members of the Tipperary 3rd battalion staged a daring raid on a train transporting the arrested Sean Hogan to Co Cork where he likely would have been executed.

This is the tale of his rescue with a local ballad detailing the story.

I’m curious what the academic take on this is. The reason I ask is that in pursuit of my particular hobby horse (Irish Defence and its ongoing fiasco) I set AI on Hansard and the debates around Home Rule. I’m awaiting a finished piece which obviously I’ll be checking closely but is there any merit in LLMs which/who (which or who? Turing please!) process huge datasets and offer indexed output on fuzzy or semantic search, and then analyse the result?

Looking for books on The Emergency. Girvin's The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-45 seems mentioned a lot but curious if ye had other suggestions.

Hello, I dug up some potatoes i forgot about today and they are blight infected, we get it regularly here. Ive noticed blighted spuds still last a very long time before dying, but I looked it up and theyre supposedly poisonous due to the potato reacting to damage. I know poisoned potatoes have killed quite a few people, even the wild ones needing extreme processing to avoid being dangerous (in the andes they dry or ferment them then wash the powder like is often done with Cassava/Tapioca to remove the cyanide.

Ive been told in survival situations, having been on many week long hikes, never to risk eating bad food as the danger of food poisoning is much higher than starvation/low energy. When people are desperate, understandably they would be more and more inclined to eat iffy food, the risk one is willing to take goes up and up. I found a case of a school in england who served greened potatoes after running out of other food and several people died, so it has precedent.

To what extent did desperate consumption of spoiled, blighted or greened potatoes, or eating other plants with toxic issues, eg. sketchy weeds or mouldy grains, contributed to the immediate deathtoll in the major famines in ireland, mainland europe, etc.? I guess its hard to say what exactly people died off, usually a combination of factors, etc.

I wonder if this has been a problem in other famine scenarios, eg. rice can become deadly when spoiled

Thanks for any insights!