Boru's millennium is marked by a magisterial study of his defining hour

Brian Boru and the Battle of Clontarf

**By** Sean Duffy

**Gill & Macmillan,** €25

**Reviewed by** Dermot Bolger

We live in a democratic era where, thankfully, in Ireland the word ''Rex is generally only ever heard in dog kennels or dominatrices' dungeons. A thousand years ago things were different, both here and across early medieval Europe, where even relatively small communities or centres of populations had their own ''Rex - to use the ...