'Hubert Butler is one of the great essayists in the English language, the peer of Hazlitt, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Orwell.' -- John Banville

'He has all the essayist's gifts: a clear, strong prose, a fascination with everyday affairs and their significance sub specie aternitatis, a readiness to generalize, the ability to digress without wandering from the point, to inform without pedantry and enlighten without condescension, to give us pleasure simply by sharing his thoughts.' -- Hugh Bredin This volume contains an essential selection of Hubert Butler's essays on Ireland, written over four decades: reflective, autobiographical pieces which describe a local habitation and a place, but gravitate unerringly towards the great issues of the day - neutrality, partition, censorship, religion, nationalism. With his incisive considerations of individual and political identity, Butler joins the great tradition of Irish libertarians going back to Swift and Burke.