The Catholics of Ulster: A History - Tapa dura

In this long-anticipated book, Marianne Elliott has succeeded in at last creating a coherent, credible and absorbing history of the Ulster Catholics - from their early medieval origins to the devolution of 1999. In the process many myths are destroyed but a picture also emerges of a history which, while in many senses quite different from the received wisdom, is with the arrival of the English and Scots a nonetheless extremely brutal and harsh one. Elliott's history is the first attempt to write an all inclusive history of one of the groups within contemporary Europe most infused with and defined by its own past. The book starts with the roots of Gaelic Ulster and ends with the aftermath of the Good Friday Agreement.

Marianne Elliott is Professor of Modern History at the University of Liverpool and Director of the Institute of Irish Studies there. Her biography of Wolfe Tone won the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Prize for non-fiction.