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Ireland is such a young society. The British were the ruling class up until they left about a hundred years ago, and we've been trying to work out what our class hierarchy is ever since.

The nineteenth century, especially the second half of it, was a time of restatement in Ireland. After the famine, after the failed rebellions of the Forties and Sixties, the cultural and political desires for self-determination began to shape each other in a series of riffs on independence and identity.

Ireland is a series of stories that have been told to us, starting with the Irish Celtic national revival. I never believed in 'Old Ireland.' It has been made all of kitsch by the diaspora, looking back and deciding what Ireland is. Yes, it is green. Yes, it is friendly. I can't think of anything else for definite.

Amongst Women concentrated on the family, and the new book concentrates on a small community. The dominant units in Irish society are the family and the locality. The idea was that the whole world would grow out from that small space.

At this moment, when Ireland seems about to break into something new, we thought it was worth looking back at a time when people seemed to have found a way out of the sectarian division of the country.

The Ireland I now inhabit is one that these Irish contemporaries have helped to imagine.

Ireland's place north and south is in Europe and leading change in Europe.

The land of Ireland for the people of Ireland.

Look around at the countries of Europe, and you'll find that practically all of them have pasts that are just as tragic as Ireland's, yet the people seem able to find some creative way at moving into the future.

A few decades ago, the Irish decided they were tired of being always near the bottom of Europe's economic indicators. So they envisioned a better future for their country, and they put their people on the right road to get there.