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FINTAN O'TOOLEreviews  The Literature of the Irish in Britain: Autobiography and Memoir, 1725-2001By Liam Harte Palgrave Macmillan, 301pp. £55

AS EARLY AS 1605, the Privy Council in London was issuing warnings about the migration of “base people from Ireland” who were being deported from France as beggars and making their way to the English capital. In the same year, there are reports of an Irish shanty town in the East End. The figures given by Brian Lambkin and Patrick Fitzgerald in their recent and superb overview, Migration in Irish History, 1607-2007suggest that over three million Irish-born people have emigrated to Britain since 1600. Over the course of the 20th century alone, 1.6 million Irish left for Britain, more than twice as many as went to North America.