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\"Ancient, rich, and strange, these magical and eerie tales from across Britain and Ireland have been passed down from generation to generation. At once dark and funny, lyrical yet earthy, these stories have influenced our landscape and culture. This definitive collection, retold by master storyteller and poet Kevin Crossley-Holland, opens a doorway to a lost world and shows the enduring power of language and imagination.\"--Jacket flap.

This book is an innovative interpretation of the history of Anglo–Irish relations from 1789 right to the present day. The French Revolution had an electrifying impact on Irish society, with the 1790s seeing the birth of modern Irish republicanism and Orangeism. This decade also saw the political integration between Ireland and the British elite, such as with Pitt and Castlereagh. The Irish, who were strongly influenced by Edmund Burke's freedom philosophies, argued that Britain's strategic interests were best served by a policy of Catholic emancipation. Britain's failure to achieve this objective — dramatised by the horrifying and tragic Irish famine of 1846–50 — set the context for the emergence of a popular mass nationalism. Eventually, the Fenian, Parnell, and Sinn Fein movements expelled the British from most of the island. This book reassesses all the key leaders of Irish nationalism, alongside key British political leaders — from Tone, Parnell and de Valera, to Haughey, Peel and Blair. It evaluates the changing ideological passions of the modern Irish question, while examining the changing economical and social worlds in London, Dublin and Belfast, all in one coherent analysis.

In The Eternal Paddy , Michael de Nie examines anti-Irish prejudice, Anglo-Irish relations, and the construction of Irish and British identities in nineteenth-century Britain. This book provides a new, more inclusive approach to the study of Irish identity as perceived by Britons and demonstrates that ideas of race were inextricably connected with class concerns and religious prejudice in popular views of both peoples. De Nie suggests that while traditional anti-Irish stereotypes were fundamental to British views of Ireland, equally important were a collection of sympathetic discourses and a self-awareness of British prejudice. In the pages of the British newspaper press, this dialogue created a deep ambivalence about the Irish people, an ambivalence that allowed most Britons to assume that the root of Ireland’s difficulties lay in its Irishness. Drawing on more than ninety newspapers published in England, Scotland, and Wales, The Eternal Paddy offers the first major detailed analysis of British press coverage of Ireland over the course of the nineteenth century. This book traces the evolution of popular understandings and proposed solutions to the \"Irish question,\" focusing particularly on the interrelationship between the press, the public, and the politicians. The work also engages with ongoing studies of imperialism and British identity, exploring the role of Catholic Ireland in British perceptions of their own identity and their empire.

\"Sited at the furthest limits of the Neolithic revolution and standing at the confluence of the two great sea routes of prehistory, Britain and Ireland are distinct from continental Europe for much of the prehistoric sequence. In this landmark study, Richard Bradley offers an interpretation of the unique archaeological record of these islands. Highlighting the achievements of its inhabitants, Bradley surveys the entire archaeological sequence over a 5,000 year period, from the last hunter-gatherers and the adoption of agriculture in the Neolithic period, to the discovery of Britain and Ireland by travellers from the Mediterranean during the later pre-Roman Iron Age. His study places special emphasis on landscapes, settlements, monuments, and ritual practices. This edition has been thoroughly revised and updated. The text takes account of recent developments in archaeological science, such as isotopic analyses of human and animal bone, recovery of ancient DNA, and more subtle and precise methods of radiocarbon dating\"-- Provided by publisher.

Modern Irish history was determined by the rise, expansion, and decline of the British Empire. British imperial history, from the age of Atlantic expansion to the age of decolonization, was moulded in part by Irish experience. But the nature of Ireland's position in the Empire has always been a matter of contentious dispute. Was Ireland a sister kingdom and equal partner in a larger British state? Or was it, because of its proximity and strategic importance, the Empire's most subjugated colony? Contemporaries disagreed strongly on these questions, and historians continue to do so. Questions of this sort can only be answered historically: Ireland's relationship with Britain and the Empire developed and changed over time, as did the Empire itself. This book offers the first comprehensive history of the subject from the early modern era through to the contemporary period. The contributors seek to specify the nature of Ireland's entanglement with empire over time: from the conquest and colonization of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, through the consolidation of Ascendancy rule in the eighteenth, the Act of Union in the period 1801–1921, the emergence of an Irish Free State and Republic, and eventual withdrawal from the British Commonwealth in 1948. They also consider the participation of Irish people in the Empire overseas, as soldiers, administrators, merchants, migrants, and missionaries; the influence of Irish social, administrative, and constitutional precedents in other colonies; and the impact of Irish nationalism and independence on the Empire at large. The result is a new interpretation of Irish history in its wider imperial context which is also filled with insights on the origins, expansion, and decline of the British Empire.

Through an investigation of the reportage in nineteenth-century English metropolitan newspapers and illustrated journals, this book begins with the question 'Did anti-O'Connell sentiment in the British press lead to \"killing remarks,\" rhetoric that helped the press, government and public opinion distance themselves from the Irish Famine?' The book explores the reportage of events and people in Ireland, focussing first on Daniel O'Connell, and then on debates about the seriousness of the Famine. Drawing upon such journals as The Times, The Observer, the Morning Chronicle, The Scotsman, the Manchester Guardian, the Illustrated London News, and Punch, Williams suggests how this reportage may have effected Britain's response to Ireland's tragedy. Continuing her survey of the press after the death of O'Connell, Leslie Williams demonstrates how the editors, writers and cartoonists who reported and commented on the growing crisis in peripheral Ireland drew upon a metropolitan mentality. In doing so, the press engaged in what Edward Said identifies as 'exteriority,' whereby reporters, cartoonists and illustrators, basing their viewpoints on their very status as outsiders, reflected the interests of metropolitan readers. Although this was overtly excused as an effort to reduce bias, stereotyping and historic enmity - much of unconscious - were deeply embedded in the language and images of the press. Williams argues that the biases in language and the presentation of information proved dangerous. She illustrates how David Spurr's categories or tropes of invalidation, debasement and negation are frequently exhibited in the reports, editorials and cartoons. However, drawing upon the communications theories of Gregory Bateson, Williams concludes that the real 'subject' of the British Press commentary on Ireland was Britain itself. Ireland was used as a negative mirror to reinforce Britain's own commitment to capitalist, industrial values at a time of great internal stress. Contents: Preface; Introduction; The Times, O'Connell and repeal ” 1843; Punch, 'rint' and 'repale' ” 1843; Traversers and priests ” 1844-1845; 'The commissioner' ” 1845; Imagining a famine/Imaginary famine ” 1845; 'The battlefield of contending factions' ” January to June, 1846; Parsing Pharaoh's dream ” July to December 1846; 'A Transition of Great Difficulty' ” January to March 1847; The death of Daniel O'Connell ” May 1847; 'A conspiracy against life': June to December 1847; Charles Trevelyan and the 'great opportunity' ” January 1848; The uprising at Boulagh ” 1848; A dream of the future ”1849; Conclusion; Bibliography; Index. Leslie A. Williams, author of Daniel O'Connell, the British Press, and Killing Remarks, was an art historian specializing in the Victorian period. At the time of her death she was Chair of the Department of Arts and Humanities at Shawnee State University, Portsmouth, Ohio. William H. A. Williams, editor, is historian and author of 'Twas Only an Irishman's Dream: The Image of the Irish and Ireland in American Popular Song Lyrics, 1800-1920. He is member of the faculty of the College of Undergraduate Studies, Union Institute & University, Cincinnati, Ohio

Spanning more than thirty years, and costing over 3000 lives, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been one of the most protracted ethnic conflicts in Western Europe. After several failed attempts to resolve the fundamental differences over national belonging between the two communities in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 seemed to offer the long awaited chance of sustainable peace and reconciliation.By looking at the various dimensions and dynamics of post conflict peace-building in the political system, the economy, and society of this deeply divided society, the contributors to this volume offer a comprehensive analysis of Northern Irish politics and society in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement and conclude that this is probably the best chance for a stable and long-term peace that Northern Ireland has had but that the difficulties that still lie ahead must not be underestimated.