Weather and Warfare: A Climatic History of the 1798 Rebellion by John Tyrrell (Collins Press, £10.99)

This book is redolent of the refrain - "How goes the weather?" - attributed to The O'Rahilly by Yeats. One thinks also of the Heaney poem about corn growing where the Wexford insurgents fell; their provisions had consisted of pockets filled with grain. Tyrrell supplies daily weather charts from May to October 1798. Thus, we learn that, in an otherwise notably dry summer, July was an extremely rainy month. This meant the Wicklow mountains formed a safe, if uncomfortable, haven for the retreating rebels. The North attached less providential significance to the weather. Ideal reading for a long wet summer.