The Story of Ireland: A History of an Ancient Family and Their Country

The Story of Ireland, originally intended as a chronicle of a single family, reads like a complete panorama of the country's social and religious history. Clearly recounting the causes for and the nature of centuries of discord between England and Ireland, it provides an authentic feel of Irish life exploring the long history of an ancient Irish family. William Magan descends directly from one of the oldest Irish royal houses, the O'Conors of Connaught. The Magan family, whose ancestral home is close to the geographical center of Ireland, split into Catholic and Protestant branches as recently as the eighteenth century. The Story of Ireland was first published in 1983 as Umma More. This completely updated edition offers a new generation of readers an absorbing and impartial account of the passage of an old Celtic family through two thousand years of Irish history, providing insights into both the country and its people and how the English and Irish have regarded each other over the centuries.