Irish Voices: An Informal History 1916-1966 Book

Illustrated with some wonderful old photographs, as well as some specially commissioned from Mark Fiennes (father of the more famous Ralph and Joseph), this is a rare thing: a handsome coffee table book that is also a thorough and absorbing history. From its last days as a reluctant part of the British Empire, through the traumas of 1916 and the Civil War to the Free State and finally the Republic, the 50 years from 1916-1966 were eventful for Ireland, to say the least. Peter Somerville-Large has a novelistic eye for the telling anecdote and the vivid detail, and he is not afraid to challenge stereotypes and accepted myths. The Easter Rebellion may have been a noble blood sacrifice in some ways, but in other ways it was little more than a squalid orgy of drunkenness and looting, a "greedy and aimless frenzy" in the view of one (nationalist) contemporary: very far from the grandeur of Yeats's great celebratory poem, "Easter 1916". This is popular history at its very best, a combination of compelling images--barefoot boys playing soldiers in 1914--oral history, and a narrator with no agenda other than to tell the truth, from all possible angles. --Christopher HartRead More