Best books about Irish history to read in 2024

“All changed, changed utterly: / A terrible beauty is born,” wrote Yeats in one of the most powerful political poems of the 20th century, Easter, 1916.

The elegiac masterpiece simultaneously mourns the loss of life and collective violence of the infamous Easter Uprising, while drawing attention to the melancholic beauty of Irish rebellion.

The poem also draws on elements of the Celtic revival with subtle references to the folkloric, living and breathing nature of the Irish landscape. It’s why this quote, even in isolation, serves as a brilliant reflection of Irish history in its totality: famine, war and bloodshed mingled with the birth and rebirth of the nation.

Throughout the poem, Yeats zeroes in on intimate portraits of typical Irishmen and women while creating a panoramic sociopolitical view of the country. This is something that writers like Yeats, Joyce, Beckett and Lady Gregory were particularly brilliant at, and it’s one of many reasons why a fascination with the bloody yet beautiful history of Ireland endures.

In perhaps the most famous of the stories, ‘The Dead’, Joyce writes, “snow was general all over Ireland […] His soul swooned