Home Rule

This is a comprehensive narrative history of British and Irish efforts to establish a devolved parliament and government in Ireland.

It explains Home Rule's invention as a means of uniting the Irish people when they were decimated by famine and divided under British rule, and traces its history up to the present day - the Belfast Agreement of 1998 and the faltering Northern Ireland Peace Process.

The history of Home Rule is shown to be a history of peaceable compromise - an attempt to contain powerful pressures for self-government without ending British sovereignty.

Such attempts failed to deter Ireland's departure from the Union in 1921.

It remains to be seen whether the modern inheritors of Home Rule will be any more successful in averting the final breakup of the United Kingdom.