A brief history of Ireland from ancient times to the 21st century, Irish History Compressed is for anyone who is interested in getting a quick overview of the subject or who want to fill in the gaps in their knowledge. Concise but comprehensive, the book can be read in a couple of sessions: ideal if you just need a summary of the key facts and don’t have the time or stamina to read scholarly tomes.
Chapter List:
1. Celtic Ireland
2. The Norman Invasion of Ireland
3. Reformation and Plantation
4. The Seventeenth Century
5. The Eighteenth Century
6. The Nineteenth Century
7. Home Rule
8. From The Easter Rising to The War of Independence
9. Treaty and Partition
10. The Civil War
11. The Free State
12. The Emergency
13. Post-Emergency Ireland
14. The Sixties and Seventies
15. The Slump
16. The Celtic Tiger
17. The Economic Crash
Irish History Compressed also contains brief biographies of key figures in Irish history, a comprehensive timeline from the Celtic Era to 2012, and suggestions for further reading on the history of Ireland.
Genre: HISTORY / Europe / Ireland
It sells slowly but steadily on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and the iBookstore. There have been about 300 sold over the last year and a half.
The French, Spanish, Portuguese and Italian translations have been selling nicely over the last few months.
I promote both the original and the translations on my website http://www.irishhistorycompressed.com which gets regular traffic (approx. 300 visitors a month).
The Norman Invasion of Ireland
The first English claim to Ireland actually came from the religious sphere: in the eleventh century the archbishops of Canterbury reasserted their right to hold spiritual authority over the whole of the British Isles. They had the support of a series of Popes who wished to unify the Church and its doctrines and practices. But this claim still had to be enforced. Therefore, in 1155 Pope Adrian IV (incidentally the only Pope to have been an Englishman) granted the lordship of Ireland to King Henry II of England. Henry was motivated less by religious zeal and more by the need to regain control over some of his more powerful subjects, who had conquered territory in Ireland for themselves and whose growing power and independence he viewed as a threat to his authority. Between 1169 and 1172 the Norman (i.e. Anglo-French) invasion of Ireland began, and by 1250 the English monarch could assert control over eighty per cent of Ireland.
The conquest was a matter of who held power in Ireland: the Normans displaced the ruling Irish kings and lords, while underneath them Gaelic society continued largely unaffected by the change in masters. Effective government control was restricted to an area around Dublin known as The Pale. This situation was to continue until the fifteenth century.
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Dutch
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Already translated.
Translated by Sjir Worms
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French
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Already translated.
Translated by Anne-Sophie Leluan-Pinker
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Author review: Very good - fast, listens to feedback, pleasant to work with and (as far as I can judge) a nice sense of style in French. |
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German
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Already translated.
Translated by Tora von Collani
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Author review: Wonderful translator - very communicative and responsive. She took an awful lot of time and care over the translation, including coping graciously with my rewrites of the final part of the English original. She also made some good suggestions about publicising the book. I speak fluent German so I can say that the translation itself was really good - she had clearly thought carefully about the best way to convey some of the specialist terminology used in the book. |
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Greek
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Already translated.
Translated by Elias Marios Kounas
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Author review: Excellent translator with very good English skills. What distinguishes him from other translators I've worked with is how he kept me informed the whole way about how he was getting on with the work. He was also very willing to help out with advice about typesetting the book cover. (This was important on account of the different alphabet in Greek.) |
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Italian
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Already translated.
Translated by Raffaella Greco
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Author review: I'm very happy all round. |
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Portuguese
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Already translated.
Translated by Makoto Yamamoto
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Spanish
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Already translated.
Translated by Sandra Cifuentes Dowling
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Author review: Very good - conscientious; careful; willing to make changes and also able to justify her translation decisions when they were queried. |
