The Irish Story : Telling Tales and Making it Up in Ireland

Here, Roy Foster demolishes the cliches that surround Ireland's past, examining how key moments from its history 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' memoir, Foster aims to separate the tales from the truth.