From her overprotected girlhood to her ascension to the throne at twenty-five, to her personal and national difficulties as queen, Elizabeth II has presided over her people for half a century. Acclaimed historian Erickson tells the queen's story from her point of view, letting the reader re-live Elizabeth's long and eventful life. Lilibet shows us an Elizabeth we thought we knew - but in a different light. We glimpse, as never before, the strong and appealing sovereign who has reigned over the decline of Great Britain and the fall in prestige of her own Windsor dynasty.

Charles J. Haughey, over the last five decades, has been involved in major political scandals of Watergate proportions: the Arms Crisis, the telephone tapping scandal, the Beef Tribunal, the Ben Dunne payments, tax evasion, the Terry Keane revelations, the Moriarty Tribunal investigation into payments to politicians, the McCracken Tribunal, etc.; In this revised edition of Fallen Idol, Ryle Dwyer updates the scandals and delivers his conclusions on the Haughey Years.; Lively, succinct, opinionated, drawing extensively on in-depth research, Forty Years of Controversy is the indispensable handbook for anyone intrigued by one of Ireland's most inscrutable politicians.

We are the people is a popular Loyalist slogan in Northern Ireland - a statement of loyalty, identity and devotion to and from Ireland's Protestants. This collection examines the meaning behind this legend, providing a critique of the issues which affect this heterogeneous community.

In this most improbable of twentieth-century wars, Argentina and Great Britain waged a three-month conflict over a group of islets in the South Atlantic that hold no strategic or material value for either side, that are barely habitable by any human standard, and that have fewer permanent settlers than the total number of combatants.

Ulick O'Connor takes the reader into the heart of Irish life during the 1970s and 1980s, evoking the streets and bars of Dublin with their now legendary characters: the world of Abbey Theatre and that of the Gate Theatre of Michale MacLiammoir. He recreates the atmosphere and talk of the great Anglo-Irish country houses such as Lexlip Castle and Tullynally, where he often stayed as a guest of the Guinesses and the Longfords. He also reveals the secret part he played as a go-between for the Taoiseach, Jack Lynch.;But O'Connor's stage isn't just Irish, it is international. In New York he makes friends with Viva, the star of Andy Warhol's infamous "Blue Movie", talks to Robert Kennedy, and witnesses the anti-Vietnam protests and the growth of the Civil Rights movement. In London he appears on Wogan, he dines with Alec Waugh and Paul Bowles in Tangiers, and in Stockholm he plays a practical joke on Edna O'Brien that unhappily misfires.

Synthesizing a vast body of scholarly work, Henry Patterson offers a compelling narrative of contemporary Ireland as a place poised between the divisiveness of deep-seated conflict and the modernizing - but perhaps no less divisive - pull of ever-greater material prosperity. Although the two states of Ireland have strikingly divergent histories, Patterson shows more clearly than any previous historian how interdependent those histories - and the mirroring ideologies that have fuelled them - have been. With its fresh and unpredictable readings of key events and developments on the island since the outbreak of the second world war, "Ireland Since 1939" is an authoritative and gripping account from one of the most distinguished Irish historians at work today.

This text looks at the important issues in British politics since 1945, including a brief guide to the changing political culture of Britain in that period. It should be essential reading for all students studying politics at A2 level, as it covers all the important issues required by the main examining boards. Neil McNaughton begins by reviewing the changing nature of the principal political ideologies - Conservatism, Labourism and Liberalism - before discussing how these ideological changes impact generally on policy developments in the UK. Having described the changing nature of the political culture, addressing partisan dealignment, changing morality, the decline of religion and class fragmentation, he examines on a chapter-by-chapter basis the key issues of British politics today, the particular problems affecting Northern Ireland, devolution, constitutional reform, rights, the environment, issues of gender and sexual orientation, European integration and the European Union, the impact of the European Union on Britain, ending with a brief summary of the issues that are likely to take centre stage in British politics in the first decade of the 21st century. The text has been written in a accessible style, with helpful features such as summaries, definitions, tables and boxes to illuminate the points made.