The Matter with Ireland

With the addition of thirteen previously uncollected pieces, this new volume of Bernard Shaw's political journalism presents the most complete book in existence of Shaw's writing on Ireland and its political troubles.Throughout life, Shaw's native land occupied his attention. As he explains, he spent only 20 of his more than 90 years in Ireland, but those 20 came first and left an indelible mark upon him. Representing a 60-year period beginning in 1886, these selections include essays, newspaper and magazine articles, letters to the editor, interviews, and passages from books.First collected and compiled in 1962 by these two eminent scholars of Irish literature, the pieces were hailed for their prophetic intelligence and the book was described by the Cork Examiner as "the reference for future 'examiners' of Ireland's problems". The Washington Post called it a "searching history", presented with "the incisiveness of a contemporary and the timelessness of a prophet". Today, Shaw's opinions and predictions not only illuminate the past but also explain many of the intractable problems of the present.