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Of Luck and the Irish, William Birdthistle wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "This deceptively brief volume is an encyclopedic survey of change throughout the national fabric of Ireland -- religious, political and cultural -- over the past three decades."
Last week I asked him what he was reading. His reply:
Read more about Luck and the Irish at the Oxford University Press website.Scotland's Books by Robert Crawford [Penguin, literary history], because I'm giving the Clark lectures in Cambridge next year and want to talk about nationalism and romanticism in literature; The Truth Commissioner by David Park [Bloomsbury], because it's a powerful novel about Northern Ireland by a writer I deeply admire; God's Architect: Pugin and the Building of Romantic Britain by Rosemary Hill [Penguin] and Talleyrand: Betrayer and Saviour of France by Robin Harris [John Murray], because I'm a judge of a prize for literary biography & have to produce a shortlist in a week or so; and Selected Poems by Bernard O'Donoghue [Faber], because he is a poet of great distinction and subtle power who writes about the Ireland I know (or knew).
Learn more about Roy Foster's research and other publications at his Oxford faculty webpage.
--Marshal Zeringue