by Robert Kee
The Green Flag, now published in three separate volumes, is a compelling and remarkable work and certainly the most authoritative and revealing history of Irish nationalism ever written. The Most Distressful Country, the first of the three volumes, begins with the question 'Who were the Irish?' and ends in the early 1860s, having covered in detail the Tudor policy of conquest and confiscation, the revolts of 1641 and 1689, the Penal Laws of 1703, the influence of the French Revolution, the Great Famine of 1845.