A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000

Luck and the Irish

A combative and compelling book about the radical changes that have transformed Ireland over the last thirty years

R.F. Foster's Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000 examines how the country has weathered thirty years of rapid transformation, and what these changes may mean in the long run. 
 
 From 1970, things were changing in Ireland - the Celtic Tiger had finally woken, and the rules for everything from gender roles and religion to international relations were being entirely rewritten. By the end of the twentieth century, Ireland had become a global brand, and the almost completely unexpected wave of prosperity had brought with it upheavals in economics, sexual mores and culture, as well as a shift in North-South attitudes. 
 
 Roy Foster also looks at how characters as diverse as Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson, Charles Haughey and Bob Geldof have contributed to Ireland's altered psyche, and uncovers some of the scandals, corruption and marketing masterminds that have transformed Ireland - and its luck. 
 
 'Examines our society with fierce intelligence and insight' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Colm Tóibín, Irish Times Books of the Year 
 
 'Occasionally angry, sometimes whimsical and frequently hilarious ... Appeals both to those who know nothing and those who think they know everything' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Conor Gearty, Financial Times 
 
 'The brilliance of the writing places him as a historian in a league of his own ... A balanced work offering his own distinctive, original and elegant insights' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Diarmaid Ferriter, Times Literary Supplement 
 
 R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, The Irish Story and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

The brilliance of the writing places him as a historian in a league of his own ... A balanced work offering his own distinctive, original and elegant insights

Occasionally angry, sometimes whimsical and frequently hilarious ... Appeals both to those who know nothing and those who think they know everything

Examines our society with fierce intelligence and insight

[Foster is] the great demythologizer of Ireland

R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland, 1600-1972, The Irish Story and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

From 1970, things were changing in Ireland &ndash; the Celtic Tiger had finally woken, and the rules for everything from gender roles and religion to international relations were being entirely rewritten. 
 
Luck and the Irish examines how the country has weathered these last thirty years of change, and what these changes may mean in the long run. R. F. Foster also looks at how characters as diverse as Gerry Adams, Mary Robinson, Charles Haughey and Bob Geldof have contributed to Ireland&rsquo;s altered psyche, and uncovers some of the scandals, corruption and marketing masterminds that have transformed Ireland &ndash; and its luck.

Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland

The Irish Story

R.F. Foster's The Irish Story: Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland examines how key events in Irish history have been recast and retold to serve a multiplicity of purposes. 
 
 In this provocative and extremely funny book Roy Foster demolishes the clichés that surround Ireland's past, examining how key moments have been turned into myths - and, more recently, airbrushed and repackaged for Hollywood and popular culture. 
 
 Whether discussing the 'misery tourism' of Famine theme parks, ideas of mystical Celticism, the contested 'Irishness' of Yeats or the sentimentalized childhoods of Angela's Ashes and Gerry Adams's memoir, The Irish Story brilliantly separates the tall tales from the truth. 
 
 'Brilliantly scathing ... combative, incisive and immensely enjoyable' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times 
 
 'Inspirational ... challenging, illuminating and witty' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Antonia Fraser, Irish Times Books of the Year 
 
 'Very funny ... the Irish story has rarely received so lively and unbiased an unfolding' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Patricia Craig, Independent 
 
 'A complex and supremely intelligent revision of Irish identity' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Colm Tóibín, Independent Books of the Year 
 
 'Blazingly good ... lucid and elegant' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;John Lloyd, Financial Times 
 
 R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

R.F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at Oxford University.  His books include MODERN IRELAND 1600-1972 and the first volume of W.B. YEATS: A LIFE.  In 2000 he was a Booker Prize judge.  THE IRISH STORY was shortlisted for the 2001 Orwell Prize.

Each of Foster's books has generated vigorous discussion, but in THE IRISH STORY he breaks fresh ground even by his own standards. Driven by his sense of the seriousness of history and a fascination with those who distort it, THE IRISH STORY examines how key facets of Ireland's past have been tampered with to serve a multiplicity of purposes. 
 
THE IRISH STORY is endlessly varied, surprising and funny. It is also a rallying cry for those anxious that contemporary Ireland may be in danger ofturning itself into a meretricious historical theme-park.

Modern Ireland 1600-1972

Masterfully blending narrative and interpretation, and R.F. Foster's Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 looks at how key events in Irish history contributed to the creation of the 'Irish Nation'. 
 
 'The most brilliant and courageous Irish historian of his generation' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books 
 
 'Remarkable ... Foster gives a wise and balanced account of both forces of unity and forces of diversity ... a master work of scholarship' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Bernard Crick, New Statesman 
 
 'A tour de force ... Anyone who really wants to make sense of Ireland and the Irish must read Roy Foster's magnificent and accessible Modern Ireland' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Anthony Clare 
 
 'A magnificent book. It supersedes all other accounts of modern Irish history' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Conor Cruise O'Brien, Sunday Times 
 
 'Dazzling ... a masterly survey not so much of the events of Irish history over the past four centuries as of the way in which those events acted upon the peoples living in Ireland to produce in our own time an "Irish Nation" ... a gigantic and distinguished undertaking' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Robert Kee, Observer 
 
 'A work of gigantic importance. It is everything that a history book should be. It is beautifully and clearly written; it seeps wisdom through its every pore; it is full of the most elegant and scholarly insights; it is magnificently authoritative and confident ... Modern Ireland is quite simply the single most important book on Irish history written in this generation ... A masterpiece' &amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;Kevin Myers, Irish Times 
 
 R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include The Irish Story and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

A history of Ireland from 1600 to 1972; an account not only of the events themselves but also the way in which those events acted upon the peoples living in Ireland to produce an 'Irish Nation'; a description of that nation's tragedy and resilience.

R F Foster

Terrific . . . It is a measure of his literary skill, as well as his expertise as a historian, that he is able to counterpoint so many life stories without sinking into confusion . . . Foster's prose is urbanely precise and he can pin down character as memorably as Yeats . . . Foster has the alertness of an Edwardian novelist to the nuances of class and location . . . depicted with masterly economy in all its brutality, confusion and courage . . . Patient, analytical, articulate, this is a book that counts because it avoids the Irish vice of replacing history with commemoration

This book . . . reveals a rich and assorted cast of characters with a diversity of views and preoccupations - feminism, socialism, religious diversity, sexual liberalism, the works . . . The beauty of Vivid Faces is that it is squarely based on the testimonies of the characters themselves - letters, diaries, articles, books and later memories - and shows them as they were, not in the light of what they became, especially those revolutionaries sanctified in the selective historical memory of the Irish Republic . . . There are very funny accounts here of how summer schools in the Irish-speaking west of Ireland were an opportunity for unchaperoned young people enthusiastically to pair off . . . There can be few better accounts of [these] people . . . than this book. Foster writes with unconcealed delight about the foibles of these wonderful individuals as well as their achievements . . . There will be any number of accounts of the Easter Rising and its genesis in the run up to the centenary, but few will be as enjoyable as this

Foster has managed to produce the most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion and the power it subsequently exerted over the public imagination. As the centenary approaches, his book will be essential reading for anyone who wishes to follow the argument about the Irish revolutionary generation

A significant accomplishment that makes a serious case for the concept of 'generations' in exploring the origins of the Rising . . . Through personal diaries, letters and journals, [Foster] allows us to see how these young people lived. What follows is a portrait of an Ireland that bears little resemblance to the country that emerged after 1922 . . . Foster's book, in unmatchable prose, is a must-read

Powerful and absorbing . . . [Foster] draws on decades of engagement with cultural history to bring an original, lively and learned analysis to a fascinating generation . . . Judicious and empathetic, with no attempt to hide his admiration for their idealism, he does not fall into the trap of assessing them acerbically through the lens of the present but allows their own words to breathe. Much of his account is riveting and skilfully woven together, with the analysis enlivened by Foster's customary sparkling prose . . . [he] does a lot to balance male-dominated accounts of the period . . . Crucially, this is not a book built on reductive hindsight; instead it gives us a deep and textured awareness of that "enclosed, self-referencing, hectic world" where the thinkers lived, worked, reflected and dreamed

Roy Foster . . . has achieved what few have managed: an account of the Irish revolution that captures its quixotic ardour without succumbing to it . . . Vivid Faces is a wonderful book about revolution - both the specific and the general. I read it in the aftermath of Scotland's abortive revolution by referendum and found Foster's analysis painfully wise

Written by a master-historian, this superbly orchestrated group portrait of Ireland's 'revolutionary generation' from 1890 to 1923 shows how the independence movement drew its ideas, tactics and personnel not from peasant outsiders but metropolitan, middle-class insiders . . . Foster highlights refreshing new perspectives

Extraordinary personal journeys outlined in Foster's richly detailed evocation of a period of Irish history in which idealism, bohemianism and artistic creativity went with a resurgence of militant nationalism and what Foster calls 'the cult of the gun' . . . Foster's exhaustively researched history delineates the various streams of cultural and social radicalism that converged in the two decades leading up to the Irish revolution

Sometimes a history book prompts one to reflect on the past and present alike. R F Foster, professor of Irish history at Oxford University, has just published such a text . . . Foster writes so compellingly

Written with a stern sense of authority, but simultaneously leaving room for suggestion, interpretation, debate and nuance, Vivid Faces is an immensely important analysis of Irish history that will be used again and again as a reference point for generations to come: continuing a much-needed healthy debate about what exactly Irish Republicanism stands for?

It is a relief to read such a study, which takes for granted that the world is incorrigibly plural, and which immerses itself in the stuff of passionate human histories

The book itself is a valuable collection of a broad range of views of participants that publishers dared not mention for decades. It dissects the propaganda to provide an insightful look at the real contemporary thinking . . . invaluable historical record

Times Literary Supplement BOOKS OF THE YEAR

The Revolutionary Generation in Ireland, 1890-1923

Vivid Faces surveys the lives and beliefs of the people who made the Irish Revolution: linked together by youth, radicalism, subversive activities, enthusiasm and love. Determined to reconstruct the world and defining themselves against their parents, they were in several senses a revolutionary generation. 
 
The Ireland that eventually emerged bore little relation to the brave new world they had conjured up in student societies, agit-prop theatre groups, vegetarian restaurants, feminist collectives, volunteer militias, Irish-language summer schools, and radical newspaper offices. Foster's book investigates that world, and the extraordinary people who occupied it.

R F Foster

Praise for Vivid Faces

Terrific . . . It is a measure of his literary skill, as well as his expertise as a historian, that he is able to counterpoint so many life stories without sinking into confusion . . . Foster's prose is urban ...

This book . . . reveals a rich and assorted cast of characters with a diversity of views and preoccupations - feminism, socialism, religious diversity, sexual liberalism, the works . . . The beauty of Vivid Fa ...

Foster has managed to produce the most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion and the power it subsequently exerted over the public imagination. As the centenary approaches, his ...

Terrific . . . It is a measure of his literary skill, as well as his expertise as a historian, that he is able to counterpoint so many life stories without sinking into confusion . . . Foster's prose is urban ...

This book . . . reveals a rich and assorted cast of characters with a diversity of views and preoccupations - feminism, socialism, religious diversity, sexual liberalism, the works . . . The beauty of Vivid Fa ...

Foster has managed to produce the most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion and the power it subsequently exerted over the public imagination. As the centenary approaches, his ...

Terrific . . . It is a measure of his literary skill, as well as his expertise as a historian, that he is able to counterpoint so many life stories without sinking into confusion . . . Foster's prose is urban ...

This book . . . reveals a rich and assorted cast of characters with a diversity of views and preoccupations - feminism, socialism, religious diversity, sexual liberalism, the works . . . The beauty of Vivid Fa ...

Foster has managed to produce the most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion and the power it subsequently exerted over the public imagination. As the centenary approaches, his ...

Books by R F Foster

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