This book is nearly a quarter-century old, but it carries its age well and though short (little more than 150 pages) it is extremely condensed and factual. The Norman invasion of 1169 was facilitated by the disunity of the Irish kings quarrelling mutually for overall power - the ruling High King, the Connachtman Ruaidhri O Conchubhair, was in open enmity with the powerful Diarmuid Mac Mur chadha of Leinster. Ireland was also, by Continental European standards, an amorphous and rather ill-organised society, while the Normans were harshly modernising soldiers and administrators. Nevertheless much more of the native traditions survived the Conquest than is often thought, and the old monastic system seems to have come to terms with the new power of the church hierarchy. The renaissance of Irish Romanesque architecture, too, continued almost unbroken. Sheehy shows that the power of the English kings in Ireland was little more than nominal for centuries, and the real struggle was between the native Irish and the colonising Anglo-Irish - many of whom, in any case, were absorbed eventually into traditional Gaelic society.
Brian Fallon
