Description
Second Edition. This impressive survey is the first volume in a major new six-volume series, the Longman History of Ireland, under the General Editorship of Steven G. Ellis. It offers the most up-to-date account of the early history of Ireland from the coming of Christianity to the first stages of the Norman settlement. In it, Daibhi O Croinin describes Ireland’s emergence from the darkness of prehistory into the brilliant light of her ‘Golden Age’, as the ‘Island of Saints and Scholars’, and the subsequent evolution of a society comparable in achievement and sophistication with any in early medieval Europe. He examines the myths, and the reality behind them, that have gathered around Ireland’s role in the formation of the ‘First Europe’, and he reassesses the contribution of Irish monks and scholars to that achievement.
