Diaries of IrelandHere is Irelands past distilled poignant personal narratives and privileged moments, human behaviour recorded in its infinite variety, voices overheard: chamber music. In these pages Elizabethan adventurers, fops, soldiers, widows, landlords, republicans, poets, hedge school masters and literary lesbians seem to dance through 400 years of Irish history. National events the siege of Limerick, the battle of the Boyne, Wexford in 1798, the Famine,

the experience of famine

With drawings by Brian Bourke

The author makes use of untapped archival sources to analyse the fortunes of the company and illuminate the changing political

the grey cloth donkey – creels full of real turf crumbs from the West – propped against the ormolu clock

As unemployment rises in every industrialized country

This vibrant new collection of letters

Ireland has been a major beneficiary of shrinking global distances but there have also been downsides to the types and degrees of change we have experienced

Yugoslavia and Buchenwald

while society has changed

metal structure

from our supermarket shelves to our television screens and studies

but to offer varied perspectives on one of the most contentious periods of Irish history