The Feckin' Book of Irish History

by Colin Murphy, Donal O'Dea (Illustrator)

Remember how boring history lessons were at school? Well, like history itself, that’s all in the past. The Feckin’ Book of Irish History serves up a gansey-load of Irish history in a pint-sized, pithy, and entertaining package.

Invasions, emergencies, and all sorts of Troubles. The Sieges of Limerick, the Big Fella, the Long Fella, and lots of English Fellas. And let’s not forget the IRB, IRA, EEC, GAA, BC, AD, ITGWU, and all them other initials. The Feckin’ Book of Irish History is with hilarious illustrations, “Interesting Stuff” sidebars that will educate you quickly and painlessly, and quotes from Daniel O’Connell, Charles Stewart Parnell, Oscar Wilde, and other sons o’ the sod.

So grab your Guinness and get into some authentic Irish history. You don’t want to have to read this stuff in a boring ol’ run-o’-the mill book, now do ya?

Genres: Nonfiction, History, Ireland, Humor

248 pages, Hardcover

First published March 16, 2009

About the author

Colin Murphy is the author of The Most Famous Irish People You’ve Never Heard Of and co-author of the bestselling ‘Feckin’ collection (The O’Brien Press). His début historical novel Boycott (Brandon) was published in 2012 to great acclaim.

Reviews

[Echo · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recently reread "The Trouble with the Irish (or the English, depending on your point of view)" and this book reminded me a lot of that one - both a very abbreviated look at Irish history and both written in a very tongue in cheek sort of way. This one, though, is more modern and covers more recent history because of it.
It was enjoyable to read, and easy to get through.

[Jody · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am SO not a retainer for history, but the humour added to the history lesson helped me reatain more than I had expected. Didn't realize how horrible the english were to the irish! I will hafta read again before my trip to Ireland.

[Kelly Lexa · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book while in Ireland because I thought I could supplement what I learned there without being bored to tears by a dry retelling of history. This was definitely not dry, but I’m not sure I quite got what I was looking for. This was a quick and humorous read, but each of the events was touched on so briefly that the book didn’t really add to my knowledge bank. I think a person starting from scratch with no knowledge of Ireland may have gotten more from it.

I think my biggest takeaways were from the text boxes of Interesting Stuff and the Feckin’ Quotes.

What I can say with 100% accuracy:
-There was a lot of fighting and bad blood between the Irish and the British. (Which is shocking, because the British have always shown themselves to be benevolent overlords. *heavy sarcasm*)
-There was also a lot of fighting between the Catholics and the Protestants.
-The independent country of Ireland is a lot younger than I thought.

This is maybe worth a read and doesn’t take long to get through, but I wouldn’t recommend it to a history buff.

[Crouton · Rating 2 out of 5]

I think this style of short form humorous history writing would definitely suite some people but it wasn't a good fit for me. I found it really hard to retain any information from this book, and after reading it cover to cover I don't feel I know that much more about Irish history than I did before.

I think it fact that it jumped so quickly from topic to topic made it hard to me to really retain any info. Not a fault of the author at all but it just wasn't in my style. I think for history texts I need books that go a little more in depth and spend more time on each topic rather than sometimes just a paragraph or two.

[John McCarthy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Feckin' good introduction to Irish history offering an invitation to continue your research.

[kit · Rating 3 out of 5]

the two books my dad got me in ireland were this and a 750 page collection of folklore so this is how it feels to be known i guess

[Anna Cook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nice mixture of history and humour! Learnt quite a lot and definitely chuckled my way through.

[Erin · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars...mostly because the slang is so funny that I laugh out loud. I did see how we have learned a few things since then that date this book a bit, but the jokes were top notch.

[Thomas Haley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Funny

[thewestchestarian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Irish history with minimal detail but plenty of nationalistic fervor. For a small, exceedingly northerly, sparsely populated island a far ways out in the North Atlantic, Ireland sure has a lot of written history. Murphy and O’Dea’s book openly admits its depth of insight is vanishingly small (the great famine when 1.5 million people starved to death and from which another 2.5 million were eventually forced to flee the country runs less than 2 pages), however, it tries to compensate with breadth. The book begins with the then glacier-covered island’s break-away from Scotland and then rips through the following 30,000 years (concentrating on the last 1,000 of course) of bummers, tragedies, misadventures, failures, catastrophes, calamities, fiascoes, messes, bumps, disasters and screw-ups – nearly all due to the English. To say the authors dislike the English is akin to saying Mahmoud Ahmadinejad likely would turn down a bat mitzvah invitation if offered. Murphy and O’Dea leave no opportunity to rail against the feckin’ English untapped often letting their anger overwhelm their humor so that the laughs they go far are occasionally as bitter as flat Guinness. They also struggle to relate the circumlocutions of Irish politics succinctly which is something like writing a “for dummies” thermonuclear device building book. Where they excel is in pulling quotes from illustrious Irish writers and statesmen and interspersing these throughout the text and in highlighting other paragraph-length fun factors or anecdotes. In summary, if you are visiting the Emerald Isle and want a brief, jokey, primer on the voluminous labyrinthine history of the place and your eyes are not offended by a lot of feckin’ cussin’ you would have to be an arse-faced ejit to choose a different book. If you are English you will want to avoid, unless you also get off on masochistic sexual practices.

[Liz Tucker · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was disappointed in this book. It has been relegated to a 'bathroom read'. It was just too chopped up ~ I expected a story that flowed, and instead it is made up of little chunks of facts sort of humorously written, with other side notes thrown in - but there are so many of these side notes, that there is no flow to the book.

[Emma · Rating 3 out of 5]

Usually I don't really appreciate history books all that much, but this was just funny. I found it amusing how Murphy bashed everyone, including the Irish, to make the true tales entertaining. The cartoons and quotes scattered throughout the book added to it, and I just really liked how it all fit together to make an entertaining version of Irish history.

[Ben Perlman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A decent and very-short summary of Irish history. It's very readable, and covers about 1000 years of history very, very quickly. I read it because I'm heading there this summer and wanted a little bit of knowledge before I go.

[Jenny Woolf · Rating 5 out of 5]

Surprisingly good way of getting to grips with Irish history in a humorous look back over what is far from a humorous tale. It makes what would be a very dry subject into an easy amusing read with lots of facts digestibly presented.

[Katie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book as I am simply awful at Irish history so a quick summary was right up my street I have to say I feel the book is more for the Irish to read up about their history as there was a lot of Irish jokes that I'm not sure the visitors would get straight away.

[Jessica Elias Caltabiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Informative and hilarious.
Really captures the spirit of the Irish and of Ireland, all while poking fun at some parts of history , but still respectfully. If you're familiar with the accent, you can almost hear it when reading, infliction and all.

[Flow · Rating 4 out of 5]

Granted I just got back from a vacation in Ireland so I was kind of geeked about the country, but their history is very unique and this book is an entertaining way to learn more about it.

[Katelyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

A funny and interesting book about Irish history. :)

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is full of good ol Irish humor and history

[Lora · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick, fun read that provides a succinct (and amusing) overview of Irish history.