Famine Diary by Brendan ╙ Cathaoir (Irish Academic Press, £13.95)

There have been a number of scholarly studies of the Famine, but this one, while obviously the outcome of genuine research, brings home its reality in a starkly immediate way. Public-spirited figures such as William Smith O'Brien had warned the Government of what was to come, while the vices of absentee landlords and mass evictions continued to plague the Irish economy. What finally came exceeded these warnings, and Brendan ╙ Cathaoir quotes the sober, factual report of the Quakers to show the fearful reality. A mass exodus began in 1847, after starvation or semi-starvation was followed by fevers and epidemics that killed more people than famine did. The facts are familiar, but this account has the immediacy of a TV documentary.