Poets and Patriots: how literature shaped Ireland

Literature After Ireland: Writing the Nation From Beckett to the Present By Declan Kiberd Head of Zeus, €30

Declan Kiberd’s sprawling, brilliant and highly provocative survey of post-war Irish literature begins with a telling anecdote about Samuel Beckett and the 1916 Rising. During Easter Week, the ten-year-old Sam was brought up Dublin’s Three Rock Mountain by his father to watch the burning city. Bill Beckett was a quantity surveyor and mainly interested in ...