Gardens of Ireland Small Group Tour

Ireland has rarely been out of the news during the past thirty years. Whether as a war-zone in which Catholic nationalists and Protestant Unionists struggled for supremacy, a case study in conflict resolution or an economy that for a time promised to make the Irish among the wealthiest people on the planet, the two Irelands have truly captured the world's imagination. Yet single-volume histories of Ireland are rare. Here, Thomas Bartlett, one of the country's leading historians, sets out a fascinating new history that ranges from prehistory to the present. Integrating politics, society and culture, he offers an authoritative historical road map that shows exactly how – and why – Ireland, north and south, arrived at where it is today. This is an indispensable guide to both the legacies of the past for Ireland's present and to the problems confronting north and south in the contemporary world.

Masterfully blending narrative and interpretation, and R.F. Foster's Modern Ireland: 1600-1972 looks at how key events in Irish history contributed to the creation of the 'Irish Nation'.

'The most brilliant and courageous Irish historian of his generation'
Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books

'Remarkable ... Foster gives a wise and balanced account of both forces of unity and forces of diversity ... a master work of scholarship'
Bernard Crick, New Statesman

'A tour de force ... Anyone who really wants to make sense of Ireland and the Irish must read Roy Foster's magnificent and accessible Modern Ireland'
Anthony Clare

'A magnificent book. It supersedes all other accounts of modern Irish history'
Conor Cruise O'Brien, Sunday Times

'Dazzling ... a masterly survey not so much of the events of Irish history over the past four centuries as of the way in which those events acted upon the peoples living in Ireland to produce in our own time an "Irish Nation" ... a gigantic and distinguished undertaking'
Robert Kee, Observer

'A work of gigantic importance. It is everything that a history book should be. It is beautifully and clearly written; it seeps wisdom through its every pore; it is full of the most elegant and scholarly insights; it is magnificently authoritative and confident ... Modern Ireland is quite simply the single most important book on Irish history written in this generation ... A masterpiece'
Kevin Myers, Irish Times

R. F. Foster is Carroll Professor of Irish History at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of Hertford College, Oxford. His books include Modern Ireland: 1600-1972, Luck and the Irish and W. B. Yeats: A Life.

Over the past hundred years, Ireland has undergone profound political, social and cultural changes. But one thing that has not changed is the Irish genius for observation and storytelling, invective and self-scrutiny. Ireland: The Autobiography draws upon this genius to create a portrait of a century of Irish life through the words of the people who lived it.

Broadcaster and historian John Bowman has mined archives, diaries and memoirs to create a remarkably varied and delightfully readable mosaic of voices and perspectives. Ireland: The Autobiography is a brilliantly selected, wide-ranging and engrossing take on the last century of Irish life. It gives us a portrait of Ireland unlike anything we've read before.

'Absorbing and illuminating ... John Bowman has selected a range of accounts of Irish life that do justice to what happened, what it felt like, and the personal and societal experiences alongside the "official" version.' Diarmaid Ferriter, Irish Times

'Very enjoyable' Philip Boucher-Hayes

This book deals with the cultivation of vegetables and fruit in cottage gardens and urban allotments across Ireland since the mid-18th century. The debates engendered by these small patches of land connect directly to some of the biggest issues in Irish history. Throughout the period, gardens and allotments have attracted the attention of people often pejoratively described as 'do-gooders' - those who wished to encourage Irish people to improve themselves economically, but also politically, morally, and even spiritually. Activists included improvers, co-operators, socialists, Protestants and Catholics, nationalists, unionists, and, more recently, environmentalists. The book explores the different strategies adopted by these people and the kinds of plots and gardens that resulted from them.

This is a comprehensive, lavishly illustrated and user-friendly photographic identification guide to the fifty-seven ferns and seventeen other pteridophytes that occur in Britain. It is the perfect companion for botanists, naturalists, professional ecologists and anyone else with an interest in this fascinating group of non-flowering vascular plants. Designed to appeal to beginners and experts alike, this authoritative book includes novel identification keys and comparison tables that have been carefully devised to present only essential, easily understood technical terms and descriptions, avoiding jargon as much as possible. Cross-referenced throughout to facilitate the comparison of similar species, this definitive field guide is the go-to source for identifying these species with confidence.

• Features hundreds of stunning colour photographs
• Comprehensive coverage of Britain's 57 species of ferns, 6 clubmosses, 3 quillworts and 8 horsetails
• Includes novel, easy-to-use, jargon-free identification keys and comparison tables
• Beautifully designed, user-friendly and accessible

This plant catalogue is in two parts. The first, published in 1801, provides a list, organised according to the Linnaean system, of the hothouse and greenhouse plants in the newly established Botanic Gardens at Glasnevin, near Dublin, and the second, from 1802, is a guide to all the plants in the gardens, including the arboretum and 'Hortus tinctoria', where dye plants (important for the Irish linen industry) were displayed, arranged according to the layout of the different beds, and giving their Linnaean and common names. Both parts are believed to have been written by Walter Wade (1740-1825), a physician and enthusiastic botanist who had lobbied for the establishment of a botanical garden on the site of the former property of Thomas Tickell, poet and government administrator in Ireland. The gardens were inaugurated in 1795, and these catalogues form the earliest evidence of their considerable holdings of native and exotic plants.