For a small island in the Atlantic, Ireland has had an astonishingly powerful impact on the wider world, both at the height of its independent power in the early middle ages (as a key exporter of Christianity to much of Europe) and at the depth of its colonial subjugation by Britain (as a key exporter of millions of settlers to North America and Australia). A History of Ireland offers a compelling and lucid account which will be of great value both to the student and to the general reader.