The Irish Story

"Ireland is, after all, a familial country; Irish history and Irish inter-communal relations, often seem to me to take on the character of a family quarrel. And we all know how families get through their days of festival and holiday: by not talking about certain subjects". Roy Foster's books on Ireland have always generated vigorous discussion, but in "The Irish Story" he breaks fresh ground even by his own standards. Here he argues that, over the centuries, Irish history itself has been turned into "a story". He examines how and why the key moments of Ireland's past - the 1798 Rising, the Famine, the Literary Revival, Easter 1916, the shifts and dislocations of the 1960s - have been worked into narratives, drawing on Ireland's powerful oral culture, on elements of myth, folklore, ghost stories and romance. The result of this constant reinterpretation is a "Story of Ireland", complete, as any story is, with plot, drama, suspense and revelation. And, of course, its own fascinating cast of storytellers, from Sullivan and Standish O'Grady to Butler and Lyons, from Yeats and Bowen to Frank McCourt and Gerry Adams.
Endlessly varied, surprising and funny, "The Irish Story" examines the use of biography and memoir as national history, and explores through linked essays the stories that people tell each other in Ireland and why they tell them. Foster also shows the danger of myth-making: the idea of history-as-entertainment. His book is a rallying cry for anyone anxious that Ireland is becoming an historical theme park.