Sean Farrell

Escaping a terrible predicament, Suzanne flees her native France with her infant son, Adam. In England she marries and has another boy, Rickie. Although a comfortable family life provides her with much-needed stability, Suzanne remains a fish out of water. Adam and Rickie have very different ideas of what it is to be a man. But Suzanne's mother is dying, and she wants to bring her family on one last trip to France to say goodbye. Thrown together, the brothers' priorities align, and they begin to find common ground - until one act changes everything. As the family unravels, Rickie's wife, Elle, bears the brunt of a deadly sibling rivalry. Told in a series of candid snapshots, The Best Boy in the World is a mesmerising album of one family's implosion, and what it takes to overcome the legacy of generational trauma.

After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience. Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry's true nature insists on revealing itself. Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.

After years of moving from place to place, a young family finds shelter in an isolated house in the Irish countryside. Their father is missing, Mum is a healer and B a formidable big sister. In his strange new territory, a wild little boy gives voice to his experience. Jerry Drain, a local famer, is stealing hay from the barn, someone is making nasty phone calls to the house at night and darkness is gathering at the edges of their lives. With his ferocious imagination the boy will do everything in his power to protect his family. But Jerry will not go away and Mum seems to be falling under his spell. It will be a year of major wins and baffling defeats for the boy, as Jerry’s true nature insists on revealing itself. Dark, funny, tender and raw, Frogs for Watchdogs thrums with the intensity of childhood. Above all, it is an ode to the blended family: the bewildering joy, wary safety and profound new bonds of love.

In Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast, Farrell analyzes the career of "political parson" Thomas Drew (1800-70), creator of one of the largest Church of Ireland congregations on the island and leading figure in the Loyal Orange Order. Farrell demonstrates how Drew’s success stemmed from an adaptive combination of his fierce anti-Catholicism and populist Protestant politics, the creation of social and spiritual outreach programs that placed Christ Church at the center of west Belfast life, and the rapid growth of the northern capital. At its core, the book highlights the synthetic nature of Drew’s appeal to a vital cross-class community of Belfast Protestant men and women, a fact that underlines both the success of his ministry and the long-term durability of sectarian lines of division in the city and province. The dynamics Farrell discusses were also not confined to Ireland, and one of the book’s central features is the close attention paid to the ways that developments in Belfast were linked to broader Atlantic and imperial contexts. Based on a wide array of new and underutilized archival sources, Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast is the first detailed examination of not only Thomas Drew, but also the relationships between anti-Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, and populist politics in early Victorian Belfast.

In Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast, Farrell analyzes the career of "political parson" Thomas Drew (1800-70), creator of one of the largest Church of Ireland congregations on the island and leading figure in the Loyal Orange Order. Farrell demonstrates how Drew’s success stemmed from an adaptive combination of his fierce anti-Catholicism and populist Protestant politics, the creation of social and spiritual outreach programs that placed Christ Church at the center of west Belfast life, and the rapid growth of the northern capital. At its core, the book highlights the synthetic nature of Drew’s appeal to a vital cross-class community of Belfast Protestant men and women, a fact that underlines both the success of his ministry and the long-term durability of sectarian lines of division in the city and province. The dynamics Farrell discusses were also not confined to Ireland, and one of the book’s central features is the close attention paid to the ways that developments in Belfast were linked to broader Atlantic and imperial contexts. Based on a wide array of new and underutilized archival sources, Thomas Drew and the Making of Victorian Belfast is the first detailed examination of not only Thomas Drew, but also the relationships between anti-Catholicism, evangelical Protestantism, and populist politics in early Victorian Belfast.

The first statewide history of the Irish in the Prairie State Today over a million people in Illinois claim Irish ancestry and celebrate their love for Ireland. In this concise narrative history, authors Mathieu W. Billings and Sean Farrell bring together both familiar and unheralded stories of the Irish in Illinois, highlighting the critical roles these immigrants and their descendants played in the settlement and the making of the Prairie State. Short biographies and twenty-eight photographs vividly illustrate the significance and diversity of Irish contributions to Illinois. Billings and Farrell remind us of the countless ways Irish men and women have shaped the history and culture of the state. They fought in the French and Indian War, the American Revolution, the Civil War, and two world wars; built the state’s infrastructure and worked in its factories; taught Illinois children and served the poor. Irish political leaders helped to draw up the state’s first constitution, served in city, county, and state offices, and created a machine that dominated twentieth-century politics in Chicago and the state. This lively history adds to our understanding of the history of the Irish in the state over the past two hundred fifty years. Illinoisans and Midwesterners celebrating their connections to Ireland will treasure this rich and important account of the state’s history.

Sectarian violence is one of the defining characteristics of the modern Ulster experience. Riots between Catholic and Protestant crowds occurred with depressing frequency throughout the nineteenth century, particularly within the constricted spaces of the province's burgeoning industrial capital, Belfast. From the Armagh Troubles in 1784 to the Belfast Riots of 1886, ritual confrontations led to regular outbreaks of sectarian conflict. This, in turn, helped keep Catholic/Protestant antagonism at the heart of political and cultural discussion in the north of Ireland. Rituals and Riots has at its core a subject frequently ignored -- the rioters themselves. Rather than focusing on political and religious leaders in a top-down model, Sean Farrell demonstrates how lower-class attitudes gave rise to violent clashes and dictated the responses of the elite. Farrell also penetrates the stereotypical images of the Irish Catholic as untrustworthy rebel and the Ulster Protestant as foreign oppressor in his discussion of the style and structure of nineteenth-century sectarian riots. Farrell analyzes the critical relationship between Catholic/ Protestant violence and the formation of modern Ulster's fractured, denominationally based political culture. Grassroots violence fostered and maintained the antagonism between Ulster Unionists and Irish Nationalists, which still divides contemporary politics. By focusing on the links between public ritual, sectarian riots, and politics, Farrell reinterprets nineteenth-century sectarianism, showing how lower-class Protestants and Catholics kept religious division at the center of public debate.