Since the publication of my first book, A Tale of Four Countries, which was both a personal memoir and an account of the last decades of white rule in southern Africa, I have been asked by many of those who read the book to expand on my comments about Irish history contained in the manuscript. Hence this version of Irish history, which attempts to explain, as briefly as possible, the background to the complexities behind the sometimes strained, but always evolving, relationship between the governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The book is addressed, in particular, to those who regard it as almost incomprehensible that the two cultures residing in Northern Ireland, with so much in common, found it so difficult to resolve what amounted to an ongoing mini civil war. James Casey has written a modern political history of Ireland (three-quarters of it encompassing the Home Rule era until December 2022), with the opening chapters laying a broad foundation to the dramatic saga of the Irish nationalist drive for self-determination. It is an honest book about a difficult subject; a popular history, not bogged down in convoluted theory or over-academic analysis. Although written from a broadly nationalist perspective, the book is not likely to cause offence to a reader from a different tradition. It is clearly written and factually based, and can be a valuable source for checking a fact about a major incident or development in the ‘fight for Irish freedom’. This is an easy-to-read and easy-to-use concise history of the island James Casey loves so much.