The Shortest History of Ireland - An Evening with James Hawes - Gower St

In The Shortest History of Ireland, James Hawes reaches beyond the clichés to tell a dramatic new story, backed up by the latest scholarship.

Irish history is often seen as a mere catalogue of colonial repression. Yet Hawes shows that Ireland, its unique culture rooted in millennia of continuity, has always been able to assimilate would-be invaders. He reveals how the Irish, ever since the roaming saints and scholars of the early Middle Ages, helped shape Europe, then America. And he argues that, with its natural wealth, its extraordinary magnetism and its exiled children across the globe, the island only needs to sidestep the last, toxic wreckage of the British Empire for its turbulent past to flow into a bright future.

James Hawes published before turning his storytelling gifts to non-fiction. His two previous shortest histories, The Shortest History of Germany and The Shortest History of England, are both major international bestsellers. He has known Ireland since the 1970s, lectured for two years at St. Patrick’s College, Maynooth (where the IRA tried to recruit him) and is married to an Irishwoman.

A complimentary glass of wine or soft drink is included in the ticket price

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Host or Publisher Waterstones