Books by Michael J . K . Walsh
Beyond Famagusta, 2026
Famagusta has witnessed the rise and fall of empires and dynasties which have left in their wake ... more Famagusta has witnessed the rise and fall of empires and dynasties which have left in their wake a rich storytelling legacy. This was a city of extremes, and so while there was certainly political influence, artistic creativity, wealth and piety, there was simultaneously fear, corruption, treachery and war. After the great siege of 1571, Shakespeare strategically situated Othello in this martyred 'seaport in Cyprus' , while operas and ballets about the triumph and tragedy of Medieval, Renaissance and Ottoman Famagusta created a European fantasy of an imagined past. Centuries later, while exiles languished in the open prison of abandoned Famagusta, French and British scholars got to work recreating sympathetic national historical narratives, and imperialists imagined and planned for alternative futures. Early photographers revelled in the desolate calm of the 19th century, film-makers documented Famagusta's turbulent 20th century, and today digital modellers contemplate ingenious ways to re-tell the story of its majestic monuments. This book examines the complex cultural memory and historical imagination associated with the ever-enigmatic, and timeless, Famagusta.
Popular Culture and Its Relationship to Conflict in the UK and Australia since the Great War, 2023
Exiting War: The British Empire and the 1918-20 moment, 2022
Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the F... more Exiting war explores a particular 1918-20 'moment' in the British Empire's history, between the First World War's armistices of 1918, and the peace treaties of 1919 and 1920. That moment, we argue, was a challenging and transformative time for the Empire. While British authorities successfully answered some of the post-war tests they faced, such as demobilisation, repatriation, and fighting the widespread effects of the Spanish flu, the racial, social, political and economic hallmarks of their imperialism set the scene for a wide range of expressions of loyalties and disloyalties, and anticolonial movements. The book documents and conceptualises this 1918-20 'moment' and its characteristics as a crucial three-year period of transformation for and within the Empire, examining these years for the significant shifts in the imperial relationship that occurred and as laying the foundation for later change in the imperial system.
After the Armistice: Empire, Endgame and Aftermath, 2021
A century after the Armistice and the associated peace agreements that formally ended the Great W... more A century after the Armistice and the associated peace agreements that formally ended the Great War, many issues pertaining to the UK and its empire are yet to be satisfactorily resolved. Accordingly, this volume presents a multi-disciplinary approach to better understanding the post-Armistice Empire across a broad spectrum of disciplines, geographies and chronologies. Through the lens of diplomatic, social, cultural, historical and economic analysis, the chapters engage with the histories of Lagos and Tonga, Cyprus and China, as well as more obvious geographies of empire such as Ireland, India and Australia. Though globally diverse, and encompassing much of the post-Armistice century, the studies are nevertheless united by three common themes: the interrogation of that transitionary ‘moment’ after the Armistice that lingered well beyond the final Treaty of Lausanne in 1924; the utilisation of new research methods and avenues of enquiry to compliment extant debates concerning the legacies of colonialism and nationalism; and the common leitmotif of the British Empire in all its political and cultural complexity. The centenary of the Armistice offers a timely occasion on which to present these studies.
Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries, 2019
Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries
presents a collection of schola... more Famagusta Maritima: Mariners, Merchants, Pilgrims and Mercenaries
presents a collection of scholarly studies spanning the thousand year history of the port of Famagusta in Cyprus. This historic harbour city was at the heart of the Crusading Lusignan dynasty, a possession of both Genoa and Venice during the Renaissance, a port of the Ottoman Empire for three centuries, and in time, a strategic naval and intelligence node for the British Empire. It is a maritime space made famous by the realities of its extraordinary importance and influence, followed by its calamitous demise.
Contributors are: Michele Bacci, Lucie Bonato, Tomasz Borowski, Mike Carr, Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Dragos Cosmescu, Nicholas Coureas, Marko Kiessel, Antonio Musarra, William Spates, Asu Tozan, Ahmet Usta, and Michael Walsh.
Eric Bogle, Music and the Great War 'An Old Man's Tears'
Eric Bogle has written many iconic songs which deal with the futility and waste of war. Two of th... more Eric Bogle has written many iconic songs which deal with the futility and waste of war. Two of these in particular, And the band played Waltzing Matilda and No Man’s Land (a.k.a The Green Fields of France), have been recorded numerous times in a dozen or more languages indicating the universality and power of their simple message. Bogle’s other compositions about the First World War give a voice to the voiceless, prominence to the forgotten, and personality to the anonymous as they interrogate the human experience, celebrate its spirit and empathise with its suffering.
This book examines Eric Bogle’s songs about the Great War within the geographies and socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and consumed. From Anzac Day in Australia and Turkey to the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and from small Aboriginal communities in the Coorong to the influence of Prime Ministers and rock stars on a world stage, we are urged to contemplate the nature and importance of popular culture in shaping contemporary notions of history and national identity. It is entirely appropriate that we do so through the words of an artist who Melody Maker described as ‘the most important songwriter of our time’
This book is about seven centuries of change in Famagusta as seen through the story of the rise a... more This book is about seven centuries of change in Famagusta as seen through the story of the rise and fall of the city’s Medieval Armenian Church. The meticulous scholarship presented in this volume offers not only a first history of the Armenian community of Famagusta but also a valuable, and timely, record of the efforts made to safeguard, understand, theorise and reconstruct (virtually) the fragile heritage it left behind. An interdisciplinary investigation of art, architecture, archives, and ‘hard sciences’ therefore escorts the reader from the era of the crusades, through the rise and fall of empires, to the political stasis of the present day.
In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies wen... more In 1914 almost one quarter of the earth's surface was British. When the empire and its allies went to war in 1914 against the Central Powers history's first global conflict was inevitable. It is the social and cultural reactions to that war and within those distant, often overlooked, societies which is the focus of this volume. From Singapore to Australia, Cyprus to Ireland, India to Iraq and around the rest of the British imperial world, further complexities and interlocking themes are addressed, offering new perspectives on imperial and colonial history and theory, as well as art, music, photography, propaganda, education, pacifism, gender, class, race and diplomacy at the end of the pax Britannica.
January 2016
Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology is a multi-disciplinary collection of... more Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology is a multi-disciplinary collection of essays exploring the complex relationship that existed, and exists, between the Great War, the British Empire, and Australia. These thematically diverse studies have been selected to help the modern reader come to terms with what that three-way relationship was, and has subsequently become, in the ten decades since August 1914. Interconnections in scholarship between war, identity, history, gender, propaganda, economics and nationalism are teased out, then presented alongside more oblique perspectives that escort the reader from the Australian wheat farm of a century ago to the exhibition of contemporary art in today’s troubled Middle East. Necessarily, the book also engages in the debate concerning the creation and subsequent [mis]use of histories, while touching upon the necessity and nature of both remembering and forgetting war.
Despite its undoubted importance, there has never been a volume dedicated entirely to studies of ... more Despite its undoubted importance, there has never been a volume dedicated entirely to studies of the historic city of Famagusta in the years which followed the siege of 1571. City of Empires: Ottoman and British Famagusta takes an important first step in redressing this imbalance. The four centuries which followed the conflict, as the contributions gathered here demonstrate, are rich research seams for scholars of history, urban design, photography, art history, literature, drama, military history and the post-war mandates. City of Empires also places emphasis on the tangible heritage of Famagusta – twice listed as endangered by World Monuments Fund and now the recipient of an increasing number of international efforts to protect it.
As odd as it may seem, the genesis of this project was 8000 kilometers from Famagusta, in Singapo... more As odd as it may seem, the genesis of this project was 8000 kilometers from Famagusta, in Singapore, and the result of a collaboration between two professors with entirely different academic interests: Michael Walsh, who had spent over a decade living in, and working on, Famagusta; and Paul Kohl, who had built an international reputation based on black and white photographs, most recently in Japan, India and Portugal, but never been to Cyprus. A combination of the two, it was felt, might very well lead to something rather special in this charismatic Eastern Mediterranean location.
Let us begin then by stating clearly what we set out not to do. In preparatory conversations for the project we agreed that perhaps too many artists and writers try to imbue their perceptions of, or feelings for, historic sites with knowledge of events which happened there. In Famagusta one hardly knows how to avoid this. This is, after all, the city of Dante’s warnings, St. Brigitte’s prophecies, Baragadino’s martyrdom, and Shakespeare’s Othello. Who would not be tempted to pontificate about what the stones would tell us, if only they could, about the various invasions, the exiled poets and politicians, the coronation ceremonies for the kings of Jerusalem, and ultimately, the rise and fall of great, global, empires? Could the lure of dreaming about the historic port, the magnificent walled city, and the wealthy merchants, courtesans and soldiers who frequented its streets, be resisted? And what about the instinct to close one’s eyes, to concentrate hard in an attempt to visualize the costumes, to hear the music, to imagine the pageantry – a utopia soon shattered by recalling the ghastly roar of siege cannon and drums, the cacophony of earthquakes which ravaged the city, and the moans of the dying in the plagues which followed? In time, don’t we allow ourselves to believe in the beauty, the respite, the tranquility and timelessness, brought about by the silence for which Famagusta was soon infamous?
This is exactly the approach that we set out to avoid. In the same way that Monet retrospectively longed for blindness from birth so that in adulthood the return of sight could afford him a freshness of seeing; and in the same way that one can only hear Handel’s Messiah for the first time, once; so too, one’s first impression of Famagusta should be both fleeting and profound. We could not risk spoiling the freshness, neutrality and immediacy of the photographer’s artistic vision of Famagusta by acquainting him with the romantic stories, bitter longing or utopian dreaming normally associated with the city. Only later, back in Singapore, would any attempt be made to match words with images, and past with present, and even then, only when entirely necessary. Instead, our primary goal was to explore the concept of Still Life - a play on words we believed to be uniquely suited to Famagusta. On the one hand, there is ‘still life’ in the bustling university town; on the other, it has become a ‘still (static) life’ where little moves forward or progresses. Artistically, the arrangement of inanimate objects into a work of art (ie a ‘still life’ or nature morte) seemed not only feasible, but truly alluring, driven by the potential of creating an aesthetic unique to Famagusta.
It is tempting to offer the reader a commentary on what is contained in the pages of this book, or to insist on explaining what the motivation was for each image / word association, but once again, we have resisted the temptation. The reason should be self-evident to those who know and love the city in all its imperfect beauty.
Paul Kohl & Michael J K Walsh
The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm offers an overview of Famagusta's Lusignan, Genoese and Ven... more The Harbour of All This Sea and Realm offers an overview of Famagusta's Lusignan, Genoese and Venetian history. The essays contribute to the understanding of the city's social and administrative structure, as well as of itsarchitectural and art historical heritage in the period from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The two themes of Famagusta's diasporas and cultural hybridity permeate all of the articles in this collaborative effort and constitute their most conspicuous unifying feature. Some of the studies carry out the harmonization of archival sources and thus manage to reconstruct the early stages of appearances of various buildings. In light of the threats facing Famagusta's medieval and early modern heritage such research is of vital importance.
There was a time seven centuries ago when Famagusta's wealth and renown could be compared to that... more There was a time seven centuries ago when Famagusta's wealth and renown could be compared to that of Venice or Constantinople. The Cathedral of St Nicholas in the main square of Famagusta, serving as the coronation place for the Crusader Kings of Jerusalem after the fall of Acre in 1291, symbolised both the sophistication and permanence of the French society that built it. From the port radiated impressive commercial activity with the major Mediterranean trade centres, generating legendary wealth, cosmopolitanism, and hedonism, unsurpassed in the Levant. These halcyon days were not to last, however, and a 15th century observer noted that, following the Genoese occupation of the city, 'a malignant devil has become jealous of Famagusta'. When Venice inherited the city, it reconstructed the defences and had some success in revitalising the city's economy. But the end for Venetian Famagusta came in dramatic fashion in 1571, following a year long siege by the Ottomans. Three centuries of neglect followed which, combined with earthquakes, plague and flooding, left the city in ruins.
The essays collected in this book represent a major contribution to the study of Medieval and Renaissance Famagusta and its surviving art and architecture and also propose a series of strategies for preserving the city's heritage in the future. They will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Gothic, Byzantine and Renaissance art and architecture, and to those of the Crusades and the Latin East, as well as the Military Orders. After an introductory chapter surveying the history of Famagusta and its position in the cultural mosaic that is the Eastern Mediterranean, the opening section provides a series of insights into the history and historiography of the city. There follow chapters on the churches and their decoration, as well as the military architecture, while the final section looks at the history of conservation efforts and assesses the work that now needs to be done.
Runaway Dreams tells the story of brothers Pat, John and Tommy McManus who, as Mama's Boys, wrote... more Runaway Dreams tells the story of brothers Pat, John and Tommy McManus who, as Mama's Boys, wrote their own chapter in the history of rock music. From a farmhouse in Derrylin, Northern Ireland, and a family steeped in the traditions of Irish folk music, the three brothers set out at the height of 'The Troubles' to make their mark on a world stage. Given an early leg up by Barry Devlin of Horslips, then by Hawkwind and Wishbone Ash, their success was assured when Phil Lynott chose Mama's Boys to accompany Thin Lizzy on their farewell tour. The band went on to circuit the world many times over, sharing the stage with the likes of Deep Purple, Rush, Sting, Black Sabbath, Rory Gallagher, and Foreigner; and touring in the company of Twisted Sister, Scorpions, Iron Maiden, Ratt and Bon Jovi. At the height of their success tragedy struck the band when youngest brother, Tommy, after years of struggle, died of leukaemia at the age of 28. There could be no Mama's Boys without Tommy, and yet it was unthinkable for the two remaining brothers not to play on. So, after a brief hiatus, the music and the successes continued with Pat and John's new venture, Celtus. Playing their debut at the Royal Albert Hall, the band went on to win the 1998 Irish World Music Award, ahead of U2, The Corrs and Enya, and toured with Sheryl Crow, Deacon Blue, Paul Carrack and Jimmy Nail. Their final performance was with the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Runaway Dreams is the story of a band of brothers who, through passion, talent, loyalty and determination, became cultural icons in Ireland and in the words of Mary Anne Hobbs 'living, breathing Irish history.' Michael Walsh lost count years ago of how many times he saw Mama's Boys, and of how many nights he hitched home in the rain through the back roads of Northern Ireland after their shows. He is now, in addition to being a Mama's Boys and Celtus fan, an Associate Professor of Art History at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Previous books include: This Cult of Violence (Yale University Press, 2002); A Dilemma of English Modernism (University of Delaware Press, 2007); Hanging a Rebel (Lutterworth Press, 2008) and London, Modernism and 1914 (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
It was unpredictable, at the outset, what impact the Great War would have on the arts in London. ... more It was unpredictable, at the outset, what impact the Great War would have on the arts in London. For many painters and their associated groups and institutions, August 1914 brought with it either opportunity, or near certain extinction. Strands of modernist painting, for example, experienced a seismic shift in tolerance, verging on cultural hostility, suggesting that it represented everything that had been corrupt, decadent and foreign and which had led to the war in the first place. Others felt that the ‘pre-war experiment’ had been a meaningless and valueless frivolity, the product of peace-time London which could now be set aside, or forcibly purged, as the nation got down to the serious business of war. Other sub-currents felt that English art, in whatever shape or form, epitomised the very culture and civilisation that Kitchener’s million was now being asked to defend in the face of an altogether more barbaric kultur. Some saw the war as heralding in the dawn of a new renaissance in English art, while others felt that art had nothing whatsoever to do with war anyway, and that it could resume only after hostilities across the channel had ceased. In short, from the Royal Academy of Arts to the Rebel Art Centre, it was unclear how art and artists were to respond to the declaration of war and how to confront the conflict in a relevant and meaningful way.
The focus of this collection of essays is not about English culture during the war. It is concerned instead with the transition period that bridged peace to war and the predictive mindsets of those concerned with painting in the year 1914. It looks at what their role in a nation at war might be – not what it eventually ended up being. Would English cultural production have to re-group and re-nationalise as definitively as did its government? How would art, and especially modern art, anticipate its role in the new intellectual climate that had been brought about by the declaration? How would the avant-garde artists and groups identify an acceptable route between pacifism and jingoism, between internationalism and xenophobia, whilst addressing the conflicting demands of a nationally intact and internationally significant cultural expression? And what of foreign modernists and modernisms working in London – for example Irish Poets, American writers, Italian Futurists, French sculptors, Russian Ballets dancers? Would the nature/legitimacy of modernism’s survival have to be rethought, and a national identity created for it, to replace the now unacceptable internationalism that had characterized it in the pre-war years? Was one kind of foreign-ness preferable to another…ie those of the Allies as opposed to the Central Powers? Did the protagonists see the avant-garde, as fundamentally, avant-guerre, and would 1914 mark the abrupt, unexpected and sudden termination of the great pre-war experiment, or would it simply alter both the trajectory and pace, en route to a different destination? The artist too would be scrutinised in this new and revealing light, where the soldier was needed to replace the dilattanti.
Percy Wyndham Lewis wrote:
They talk a lot about how a war just-finished effects art. But you will learn here about how a war about to start can do the same thing.
It is a fine starting point for a study of a war ‘about to start’ - a crisis that could only be anticipated – and a projected re-evaluative positioning of painting and painters in a soon-to-be belligerent capital. The Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University, lecturing in August 1914 declared ‘War and Art are not always enemies, and Peace is not always Art’s best friend’. But quite how that relationship was to develop was a matter of intense debate and anxious speculation in the months surrounding August 1914. 
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Books by Michael J . K . Walsh
presents a collection of scholarly studies spanning the thousand year history of the port of Famagusta in Cyprus. This historic harbour city was at the heart of the Crusading Lusignan dynasty, a possession of both Genoa and Venice during the Renaissance, a port of the Ottoman Empire for three centuries, and in time, a strategic naval and intelligence node for the British Empire. It is a maritime space made famous by the realities of its extraordinary importance and influence, followed by its calamitous demise.
Contributors are: Michele Bacci, Lucie Bonato, Tomasz Borowski, Mike Carr, Pierre-Vincent Claverie, Dragos Cosmescu, Nicholas Coureas, Marko Kiessel, Antonio Musarra, William Spates, Asu Tozan, Ahmet Usta, and Michael Walsh.
This book examines Eric Bogle’s songs about the Great War within the geographies and socio-cultural contexts in which they were written and consumed. From Anzac Day in Australia and Turkey to the ‘The Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, and from small Aboriginal communities in the Coorong to the influence of Prime Ministers and rock stars on a world stage, we are urged to contemplate the nature and importance of popular culture in shaping contemporary notions of history and national identity. It is entirely appropriate that we do so through the words of an artist who Melody Maker described as ‘the most important songwriter of our time’
Let us begin then by stating clearly what we set out not to do. In preparatory conversations for the project we agreed that perhaps too many artists and writers try to imbue their perceptions of, or feelings for, historic sites with knowledge of events which happened there. In Famagusta one hardly knows how to avoid this. This is, after all, the city of Dante’s warnings, St. Brigitte’s prophecies, Baragadino’s martyrdom, and Shakespeare’s Othello. Who would not be tempted to pontificate about what the stones would tell us, if only they could, about the various invasions, the exiled poets and politicians, the coronation ceremonies for the kings of Jerusalem, and ultimately, the rise and fall of great, global, empires? Could the lure of dreaming about the historic port, the magnificent walled city, and the wealthy merchants, courtesans and soldiers who frequented its streets, be resisted? And what about the instinct to close one’s eyes, to concentrate hard in an attempt to visualize the costumes, to hear the music, to imagine the pageantry – a utopia soon shattered by recalling the ghastly roar of siege cannon and drums, the cacophony of earthquakes which ravaged the city, and the moans of the dying in the plagues which followed? In time, don’t we allow ourselves to believe in the beauty, the respite, the tranquility and timelessness, brought about by the silence for which Famagusta was soon infamous?
This is exactly the approach that we set out to avoid. In the same way that Monet retrospectively longed for blindness from birth so that in adulthood the return of sight could afford him a freshness of seeing; and in the same way that one can only hear Handel’s Messiah for the first time, once; so too, one’s first impression of Famagusta should be both fleeting and profound. We could not risk spoiling the freshness, neutrality and immediacy of the photographer’s artistic vision of Famagusta by acquainting him with the romantic stories, bitter longing or utopian dreaming normally associated with the city. Only later, back in Singapore, would any attempt be made to match words with images, and past with present, and even then, only when entirely necessary. Instead, our primary goal was to explore the concept of Still Life - a play on words we believed to be uniquely suited to Famagusta. On the one hand, there is ‘still life’ in the bustling university town; on the other, it has become a ‘still (static) life’ where little moves forward or progresses. Artistically, the arrangement of inanimate objects into a work of art (ie a ‘still life’ or nature morte) seemed not only feasible, but truly alluring, driven by the potential of creating an aesthetic unique to Famagusta.
It is tempting to offer the reader a commentary on what is contained in the pages of this book, or to insist on explaining what the motivation was for each image / word association, but once again, we have resisted the temptation. The reason should be self-evident to those who know and love the city in all its imperfect beauty.
Paul Kohl & Michael J K Walsh
The essays collected in this book represent a major contribution to the study of Medieval and Renaissance Famagusta and its surviving art and architecture and also propose a series of strategies for preserving the city's heritage in the future. They will be of particular interest to students and scholars of Gothic, Byzantine and Renaissance art and architecture, and to those of the Crusades and the Latin East, as well as the Military Orders. After an introductory chapter surveying the history of Famagusta and its position in the cultural mosaic that is the Eastern Mediterranean, the opening section provides a series of insights into the history and historiography of the city. There follow chapters on the churches and their decoration, as well as the military architecture, while the final section looks at the history of conservation efforts and assesses the work that now needs to be done.
The focus of this collection of essays is not about English culture during the war. It is concerned instead with the transition period that bridged peace to war and the predictive mindsets of those concerned with painting in the year 1914. It looks at what their role in a nation at war might be – not what it eventually ended up being. Would English cultural production have to re-group and re-nationalise as definitively as did its government? How would art, and especially modern art, anticipate its role in the new intellectual climate that had been brought about by the declaration? How would the avant-garde artists and groups identify an acceptable route between pacifism and jingoism, between internationalism and xenophobia, whilst addressing the conflicting demands of a nationally intact and internationally significant cultural expression? And what of foreign modernists and modernisms working in London – for example Irish Poets, American writers, Italian Futurists, French sculptors, Russian Ballets dancers? Would the nature/legitimacy of modernism’s survival have to be rethought, and a national identity created for it, to replace the now unacceptable internationalism that had characterized it in the pre-war years? Was one kind of foreign-ness preferable to another…ie those of the Allies as opposed to the Central Powers? Did the protagonists see the avant-garde, as fundamentally, avant-guerre, and would 1914 mark the abrupt, unexpected and sudden termination of the great pre-war experiment, or would it simply alter both the trajectory and pace, en route to a different destination? The artist too would be scrutinised in this new and revealing light, where the soldier was needed to replace the dilattanti.
Percy Wyndham Lewis wrote:
They talk a lot about how a war just-finished effects art. But you will learn here about how a war about to start can do the same thing.
It is a fine starting point for a study of a war ‘about to start’ - a crisis that could only be anticipated – and a projected re-evaluative positioning of painting and painters in a soon-to-be belligerent capital. The Slade Professor of Art at Oxford University, lecturing in August 1914 declared ‘War and Art are not always enemies, and Peace is not always Art’s best friend’. But quite how that relationship was to develop was a matter of intense debate and anxious speculation in the months surrounding August 1914.