Sets the bar high for good writing and scholarship * Financial Times *
An excellent account of Ireland's recent history * Independent, Books of the Month, September 2024 *
Ferriter's impressionistic literary style... is reminiscent of Annie Ernaux, and is highly effective at capturing the mentality and feel of a time. The breadth of his reading is extraordinary * Irish Times *
A monumental analysis of a most mouvemente period in Irish history... Ferriter is a serious historian and his researches are oceanic * Sunday Times *
Realistic yet hopeful, Ferriter is a fine chronicler not just of Ireland, but of writing about Ireland too * Observer *
Ferriter tells the latest chapter in Ireland's story with authority and insight, deftly weaving together economic and political upheavals with equally tumultuous societal and cultural shifts * Financial Times *
A remarkable book ... Ferriter writes about as history events that are still relatively close in time and keenly felt. It is a tour de force. * Church Times *
Anybody who cares about Ireland as much as Ferriter clearly does will be consulting this landmark publication for many years to come. * Irish Independent, Best Books of 2024 *
No one could be better-informed, more judiciously-minded or more engaging to read than Ferriter. * Belfast Telegraph *
A punchy, opinionated portrait of Ireland in the last 30 years... There is no better guide than Diarmaid Ferriter * Herald *
Forensic and insightful... A major achievement. Ferriter delivers his material with the authority and conviction of a born teacher * Irish Independent *
What makes Diarmaid Ferriter such a compelling and readable historian is not just his deep understanding of the past but how that understanding makes sense of the present * Irish Examiner *
A judicious assessment of recent Irish developments * Sunday Telegraph *
Ferriter's strengths are the thoroughness of his research and his ability to compile a coherent case... his analysis here is nuanced [and] the writing as fluent as ever * Literary Review *
Diarmaid Ferriter currently carries the flag for the historian-as-commentator, and does it with considerable elan... Delivered in rapid-fire style ... Ferriter maintains a beady eye on the challenges of writing contemporary history at a time when the sources of knowledge and record are themselves changing exponentially. * Spectator *
Provides sterling analysis... Among Ferriter's assets as an analyst and a historian is his flair for literary allusion. * The TLS *
Praise for Diarmaid Ferriter:'Ferriter is the outstanding Irish historian of our time: robust, intellectually sophisticated and a master of the sources * Prospect *
Ferriter's work is a judicious mixture of the serious and the hilarious, the comic and the tragic * Literary Review *
Ferriter is interested above all in the sources, what is preserved and what is forgotten and the oblique shafts of light which they cast on a disputed history * Spectator *
[Ferriter] brings considerable acumen and authority... among his assets as an analyst and a historian is his flair for literary allusion. [He] provides a sterling analysis of the ins and outs of the peace negotiations [and] doesn't shy away from the disastrous policies and outcomes * Times Literary Supplement *