Ireland’s Holy Wars, by Marcus Tanner
Like Ireland's religious history itself, books about religion in Ireland provoke controversy. One reviewer found Marcus Tanner's book "plodding and dense, full of turgid prose and cluttered with detail." But that's not the book I read. I found it one of the best-written things about Irish history and culture I've come across. Tanner is a journalist working for The Independent who took off more than a year to research and write this book. He combines the sense of history that comes from the study of complex sources with the insight of a journalist who can rivet readers with a telling anecdote or aside.
Is Tanner biased? All of us who write about religion in Ireland must run a gauntlet of suspicion about partisanship. Indeed, Tanner's book on Croatia (1998) has been criticized for being anti-Serb because of his alleged reliance on Croat sources. How, then, did this non-Irishman do in this context? He was protective of, and offensive to, both Catholics and Protestants. For those who write about Ireland, that's not bad.
Tanner is particularly good at shedding light on the sad tale of the old English settlers who were loyal to both Catholicism and the crown. He is a bit less convincing in discussing the worldview of the English and Scots "planted" in Ireland in the post-Reformation period. His treatment of secularization in the Republic of Ireland is excellent, but it will not please those Irish-Americans who fantasize about a staunchly Catholic Ireland standing against the secular tide sweeping in from England and Europe.
