The Ancient World of the Celts, Peter Berresford Ellis. (Constable, £25) ISBN 0094787204 Ancient Ireland: Life Before the Celts, Laurence Flanagan. (Gill and Macmillan, £16.99) ISBN 0717124347

Those of us who desire to know about the past are served by many people and groups: researchers, teachers, writers, and not least by publishers—without whom the thoughts of historians […]

The Oxford Companion to Irish History, S.J. Connolly (ed.). (Oxford University Press, £25) ISBN 0-19-211695-9

The presentation of Irish culture as a commodity has developed into a remarkable world-wide phenomenon in recent years. The success of Irish writers, musicians and dancers on the global stage […]

Early Irish Farming, Fergus Kelly. (Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, £16) ISBN 1855001802

While the title under review hints at a book of limited focus, suggesting a curious blend of archaeology and dilettante history, what we have is an in-depth study more comprehensive […]

The Making of Ireland, from ancient times to the present, James Lydon. (Routledge, £45 hbk, £14.99 pbk) ISBN 041501347X, 0415013488

James Lydon has undertaken a daunting task in writing a history of Ireland from ancient times to the present. It is difficult to cover the broad sweep of history in […]

Atlas of the Irish Rural Landscape, F.H.A. Aalen, Kevin Whelan and Matthew Stout (eds). (Cork University Press, £35) ISBN 1-85918-095-7

Among the various terms applied to works of reference, ‘atlas’ has now become the most user-friendly, more companionable than ‘companion’ and certainly less repellent than ‘dictionary’, ‘directory’ or ‘encyclopaedia’. To […]