It has been quite startling how little has been written about the 400th anniversary of the Plantation of Ulster over the past year. After all, the cultural, religious, political and linguistic effects of the plantation still echo in contemporary society. All the more surprising then that so little attention has been given to those momentous events in, say, the way in which the Great Famine was commemorated.

One publication which has not been found wanting in this regard is History Ireland whose current issue (Nov/Dec) is a special on the plantation. There are 14 articles in the issue in which the various threads are discussed in a very comprehensive way though not in a language which frightened this non-historian. It was certainly very encouraging to see an entire article in Irish in the magazine by Máire Nic Cathmhaoil on “Triall ar an tobar Gaelach” and to note one (in English) on Bardic poets and their views on the plantation by Marc Caball. It is right and proper that material written in Irish is used to illustrate events as they happened.

Get out to the shops and buy a copy. There is, to use a cliché, lón machnaimh to be had.