Ronan Fanning: 3 books

This is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history: a decade of unleashed passions that came close to destroying the parliamentary system and to causing civil war in the United Kingdom. It was also the decade of the cataclysmic Great War, of an officers' mutiny in...

Ronan Fanning offers a reappraisal of the most famous, and most divisive, political figure in modern Irish history, reconciling Éamon de Valera’s shortcomings with a recognition of his achievement as the statesman who embodied Irish independence and spared the nation decades of unproductive debate on the pros and cons of remaining tied to Britain.

Escaping a desperate marriage at the age of 20, Eliza Lynch fled Ireland to Paris where her extraordinary beauty and intelligence won the attention of the soon-to-be dictator of Paraguay, Francisco Solano López. Although the couple never married, Eliza bore him seven children and was seen...