The Irish left their homes unwillingly, as convicts or rejects to Australia, men to build roads in the Antipodes, orphan girls to become house servants. And they left willingly, forming the scattered parts of the global Irish diaspora—the Lennons from County Down to Liverpool, eventually to produce John of the Beatles; the Kennedys from County Wexford to Boston, eventually to produce another John, the first Irish Catholic president of the United States; and the Kearneys from County Offaly to New York, to produce a second American president, Barack Obama.
