Along with Liam de Paor's Divided Ulster, these are surely essential works for anybody in the South (or in England, or America) who wishes to grasp the hackground-in-depth to the "Troubles" in Northern Ireland. The vice-grip of history, a factor often shrewdly exploited by self-interested politicians and churchmen, has centuries of mutual bitterness and distrust to weld and tighten it, not all of which by any means can be explained in terms of simple sectarian divides. The social phenomenon of the Ribbonmen, for instance, is objectively analysed for what it was, while in the second work Carson is shown as a man whose energy and decisiveness and sense of political timing might have worked wonders if they had been harnessed to a better cause than the wrecking of Home Rule. In fact, Carson surely should be viewed as one of the many eminent casualties of Irish history, rather than as one of its heroes or villains.