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Five centuries of Irish history are explored in this informative and accessible volume. John Gibney proceeds from the beginning of Ireland’s modern period and continues through to virtually the present day, offering an integrated overview of the island nation’s cultural, political, and socioeconomic history. This succinct, scholarly study covers important historical events, including the Cromwellian conquest and settlement, the Great Famine, and the struggle for Irish independence.

This magnificent biography of Henry VIII is set against the cultural, social and political background of his court - the most spectacular court ever seen in England - and the splendour of his many sumptuous palaces. An entertaining narrative packed with colourful description and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, but also a comprehensive analytical study of the development of both monarch and court during a crucial period in English history.

WASPs finally get their due in this stimulating history by one of the world's leading geneticists. Saxons, Vikings, and Celts is the most illuminating book yet to be written about the genetic history of Britain and Ireland. Through a systematic, ten-year DNA survey of more than 10,000 volunteers, Bryan Sykes has traced the true genetic makeup of British Islanders and their descendants.

In We Don't Know Ourselves, Fintan O'Toole weaves his own experiences into Irish social, cultural, and economic change, showing how Ireland, in just one lifetime, has gone from a reactionary "backwater" to an almost totally open society - perhaps the most astonishing national transformation in modern history. O'Toole narrates the once unthinkable collapse of the all-powerful Catholic Church, brought down by scandal and by the activism of ordinary Irish. He relates the horrific violence of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, which led most Irish to reject violent nationalism.

The period between Bloody Sunday in 1972 and Good Friday in 1998 was one of the most troubled, turbulent, and triumphant periods for the Irish. The island went from financial depression to quietly becoming an economic powerhouse, while at the same time, bridging the violent divide between past and present, Catholic and Protestant, Unionist and Republicans, North and South. Join famed historian and master storyteller Edward Lengel to trace the roots and evolution of the Irish Troubles.

The IRA has been a much richer, more complexly layered, and more protean organization than is frequently recognized. It is also more open to balanced examination now - at the end of its long war in the north of Ireland - than it was even a few years ago. Richard English's brilliant audiobook offers a detailed history of the IRA, providing invaluable historical depth to our understanding of the modern-day Provisionals, the more militant wing formed in 1969 dedicated to the removal of the British Government from Northern Ireland and the reunification of Ireland.

Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes.

Thomas Keneally, the Booker Prize-winning author of Schindler’s List, is universally praised for crafting smooth narratives from authentic historical events. With The Great Shame, he turns his insightful eye toward the Irish struggle through the 19h century. In sharp contrast to much of Europe, Ireland was a terrible place to be during the 1800s. Many of the nation’s finest people set sail for America and Canada.

In this epic narrative, Myles Dungan examines two hundred years of agrarian conflict from the ruinous famine of 1741 to the eve of World War Two. It explores the pivotal moments that shaped Irish history: the rise of 'moonlighting', the infamous Whiteboys and Rightboys, the insurrection of Captain Rock, the Tithe War of 1831–36, the Great Famine of 1845 that devastated the country and drastically reduced the Irish population, and the Land War of 1878–1909, which ended by transferring almost all the landlords' holdings to their tenants.

The story of Britain from the earliest settlements in 3000BC to the death of Elizabeth I in 1603. To look back at the past is to understand the present. In this vivid account of over 4,000 years of British history, Simon Schama takes us on an epic journey which encompasses the very beginnings of the nation's identity, when the first settlers landed on Orkney. From the successes and failures of the monarchy to the daily life of a Roman soldier stationed on Hadrian's Wall, Schama gives a vivid, fascinating account of the many different stories and struggles that lie behind the growth of our island nation.

A bomb planted by the Irish Republican Army exploded at 2:54 a.m. on October 12, 1984. It was the last day of the Conservative Party Conference at the Grand Hotel in the coastal town of Brighton, England. Rooms were obliterated, dozens of people wounded, five killed. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was in her suite when the explosion occurred; had she been just a few feet in another direction, flying tiles and masonry would have sliced her to ribbons. As it was, she survived—and history changed.

Pocket History: The Troubles chronicles the 30 year long Irish Troubles. It begins right at the start with the first English invasion of Ireland and continues right up until present day, answering the question of what does the legacy of the troubles mean for modern day Irish and British people.

The search for justice for this one man's death—his body found in broad daylight, with tape over his eyes, an undisguised hit—would deliver more than the truth. It exposed his status as an informant and led to protests, campaigns, far-reaching changes to British law, a historic ruling from a senior judicial body, a ground-breaking police investigation, and bitter condemnation from a US Congressional commission.

Lancater and York is a riveting account of the Wars of the Roses, from beloved historian Alison Weir. The war between the houses of Lancaster and York was characterised by treachery, deceit, and bloody battles. Alison Weir's lucid and gripping account focuses on the human side of history. At the centre of the book stands Henry VI, the pious king whose mental instability led to political chaos, and his wife Margaret of Anjou, who took up her arms in her husband's cause and battled in a violent man's world.

More than 40 million people consider themselves Irish American, and yet most of them do not truly understand the rich cultural history of their ancestors. From prehistoric times to the emigration of the Irish to Amerikay, this broad, yet comprehensive, history gives a general overview of the deep history of Irish Americans.

It started in 1845 and lasted six years. Before it was over, more than one million men, women, and children starved to death and another million fled the country. Measured in terms of mortality, the Great Irish Potato Famine was one of the worst disasters in the 19th century-it claimed twice as many lives as the American Civil War. A perfect storm of bacterial infection, political greed, and religious intolerance sparked this catastrophe.

First published in 1944, Enemy Coast Ahead quickly became regarded as the classic Bomber Command story, following Gibson's RAF career from flying the Hampden and Manchester at the beginning of World War II to the triumphant return home of the Lancasters from the famous 1943 Dambuster raid, which Gibson led and for which he was awarded the Victoria Cross.

After two decades of relative peace following the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, the Brexit referendum in 2016 reopened the Northern Ireland question. In this thoughtful and engaging book, Feargal Cochrane considers the region's troubled history, from the struggle for Irish independence in the 19th century to the present.

The Irish-American story, with all its twists and triumphs, is told through the improbable life of one man. A dashing young orator during the Great Famine of the 1840s, in which a million of his Irish countrymen died, Thomas Francis Meagher led a failed uprising against British rule, for which he was banished to a Tasmanian prison colony. He escaped and six months later was heralded in the streets of New York - the revolutionary hero, back from the dead, at the dawn of the great Irish immigration to America.

Sinn Féin is the most popular political party in both Northern Ireland and the Republic. A movement once synonymous with a paramilitary campaign is on the brink of taking real power through purely democratic means. But if Sinn Féin has mastered the art of electoral politics, it remains strangely opaque. Who really runs the party? How is it funded? And what can we expect of it as a party of government? Aoife Moore, Irish Journalist of the Year in 2021, explores these and other burning questions in The Long Game.