An Irish TImes Book of the Year
''The beauty of this book is in the telling: The Irish Difference lays out its themes and chronologies with impeccable clarity, and is full of fascinating detail... Exemplary.'' Irish Independent
For hundreds of years, the islands and their constituent tribes that make up the British Isles have lived next door to each other in a manner that, over time, suggested some movement towards political union. It was an uneven, stop-start business and it worked better in some places than in others. Still, England, Wales and Scotland have hung together through thick and thin, despite internal divisions of language, religion, law, culture and disposition that might have broken up a less resilient polity. And, for a long time, it seemed that something similar might have been said about the smaller island to the west: Ireland.
Ireland was always a more awkward fit in the London-centric mini-imperium but no one
