This is a remarkable debut performance ... O Siochru has] attempted the difficult and unfashionable task of writing narrative history ... This is an important book which is also reasonably priced and well produced. It is a piece of positive revisionism about Ireland in the 1640s. Some of its findings will of course be challenged in due course but the main edifice it has constructed should stand the test of time', Hiram Morgan, History Ireland. 'Thanks to Micheal O Siochru's expert dissection of the Confederation, much about it is clarified. Henceforward his account will be the account to which the interested must turn. More fully than ever before, the membership and structures of the convention at Kilkenny, elected to represent the whole island, are laid bare' Toby Barnard, TLS.