Brilliant and evocative, a classic account of life in ancient Ireland. ""If you're Irish enough to feel haunted by the place in any nook or corner of your heart, you will want to read the book and see the pictures""--Boston Globe. ""Roy explores early Irish history from the island's first inhabitants around 7000 B.C. to the Norman invasion of A.D. 1169. This beautifully written, highly evocative work takes an innovative approach to Irish history, one that is fitting for a land where the past never dies. Roy combines scholarship with personal reminiscence and contemporary interviews to give a well-rounded portrait of the Celtic past and its hold on the present. Each chapter focuses on a particular geographical or archaeological site and examines the entire historical period the site represents....The black-and-white photographs are wonderfully brooding and ghostlike....Part history, part journal, part travelogue, this exquisite book should find a wide audience""--Booklist. ""To read this handsomely designed book with its sensitive (mostly scenic) photographs is to accompany the author on an erudite yet companionable ramble through several millennia of Irish life from Neolithic to the 12th century...A compassionate book, as well as a work of passion. Richly anecdotal, yet intellectually disciplined and honest, it shares with readers both the specific complexity of early Ireland and a more general joy of learning""--LA Times.