Author(s): Foster, Professor R F,
Binding: Paperback,
Date of Publication: 05/09/2002,
Pagination: 304 pages,
Series: N/A,
Imprint: Penguin Books Ltd,
Published By: Penguin Books Ltd,
Book Classification: British & Irish history, Social & cultural history
ISBN13\EAN\SKU: 9780140296853

Description:
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 cliches 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.

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.