'Only superlatives will suffice. Roy Foster has given us the best single-volume history of modern Ireland of our time. No one who claims to be educated can leave it unread.'
Ronan Fanning, Irish Independent

'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" that was at last politically something more than rhetoric... a dazzling if demanding performance and those with knowledge of Irish history will be dipping in and out of it for years to check with Foster's many incisibe comments'
Robert Kee, Observer

‘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, Sunday Times, Books of the Year

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

‘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

‘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

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

‘Foster’s wonderfully-written history … a literary and historical masterpiece, likely to influence events as well as record them’
Grey Gowrie, Daily Telegraph

‘He writes like an angel … handling the great sweep of social, economic, political and cultural events with literary dash and scholarly sympathy’
Chris Patten, Guardian

‘His prose, at once lyrical and sinewy, is a pleasure to read; and the felicity of style is matched by organizational skill … He has brilliantly achieved his declared goals of moving the account forward on a broad front, illuminating the social, cultural and intellectual dimensions, no less than the political, of life in Ireland in an impressively balanced study of sustained intellectual power’
Joseph Lee, Times Literary Supplement

‘Splendid … General history needs to combine a broad sweep with attention to vivid, significant detail. Foster fulfils this requirement admirably … one of the foremost historians of our time’
John Grigg, Times

‘Marvellous … [a] remarkable book – always humming with life, unsparingly fair … essential reading’
Ferdinand Mount, Sunday Telegraph