A new history of Ireland

Abstract

The travail of the mountains has finally ended with the publication of the long-awaited second volume ofA new history of Ireland, almost two decades after its inception. By a curious coincidence Clarendon has simultaneously published the second volume of theHistory of Wales(R.R. Davies,Conquest, coexistence and change: Wales, 1063-1415). A comparison is therefore not only inevitable, it is revealing. The Welsh volume is carefully integrated and closely written, whereas its Irish counterpart lumbers along camel-like with sometimes distressingly little co-ordination: where Davies contains his narrative within a tight conceptual framework, the latter is constructed on a traditional narrative scheme that consumes half of the text. The difference is due in part to the probably insurmountable difficulty of integrating the labours of nineteen contributors, but part of the problem arises from the rigidity of the scheme into which their labours are compressed.