AS A consequence of the professionalisation of historical writing that has en place in Ireland in the past half century, it has become increasingly difficult for the amateur scholars and popularisers that were so prominent on the historiographical landscape until the 1950s to establish a secure niche.

The work of figures such as Richard Hayes, Stephen Gwynn and Charles Dickson, who wrote extensively, and frequently with perspicacity, on 18th century Irish history still features in bibliographies, but it has been eclipsed interpretively, and methodologically, by the more inquisitorial approach favoured by contemporary academic practitioners.

The virtual revolution in our knowledge and understanding of the 18th century that has taken place in recent years is due almost entirely to the efforts of academic historians. However, it is also the case that this has not reverberated as widely as it ought because of the chasm that has opened between professional historians and the reading public.

The sheer volume of Irish history published annually indicates that this chasm is not as yawning as some cultural Cassandras opine, but the success of the magazine History Ireland and the occasional appearance on the bestseller lists of history books like Jarlath Waldron's Maamtrasna prove that there is a large popular audience for history that needs to be catered for.

As one of the foremost exponents of the genre of "popular history", Charles Chenevix Trench is more aware of this than most. Though the author of many books on British, Indian and Irish history, he is probably best known to Irish readers for a very useful biography of Daniel O'Connell.

O'Connell and his antecedents also feature in this ambitious attempt to write an up to date popular "political history of Irish Catholic landlords from 1690-1800", but though the book is both engaging and informative it is inadequately researched and interpretatively wanting.

Perhaps the most obvious manifestation of this is the book's failure to deliver on the promise of the title. Grace's Card refers to the playing card used by John Grace, Baron of Courtown, in 1689 to communicate his celebrated rejection of an invitation to join forces with William of Orange. This is a vivid and telling image, but Chenevix Trench does not offer the reader an account of Irish Jacobitism that both the prominence accorded the incident and its use in the book's title would lead one to expect.

Indeed, instead of engaging with the relevant work of Brendan O Buachalla, Eamonn O Ciardha, Paul Kleber Monod and others, he opts for a more familiar narrative that owes more to the likes of Richard Hayes and M.J. O'Connell and that is heavily reliant on family histories. There are some tantalising references to the Jacobite activities of the likes of Redmond Everard, Geoffrey Keating, James (not John) Cotler and others, but there is little to suggest that this is currently one of the most active and exciting areas of research in Irish history.

Chenevix Trench's account of the experience of Irish Catholic landlords in the 18th century is dominated by a familiar exposition of the impact upon them of their military defeat at the hands of the Williamite army in 1689-91 and their survival during the penal era.

Appropriately enough, the book opens with chapters on the war of the two kings and the postwar settlement (derived largely from J.G. Simms), and an explication of the Penal Laws that eschews the exaggeration characteristic of many popular accounts of this subject.

There is useful information too in the four chapters on Catholic families that constitute the book's core. The anecdotes he relates about Catholic families are frequently telling and sometimes fascinating, but here, as in the final chapters when the narrative re-focuses on political events, his lack of familiarity with the full corpus of relevant scholarly work on this subject is his Achilles' heel.

As a result, the book overall is flawed and incomplete. Despite this, Grace's Card is an enjoyable and, in places, a rewarding and informative essay in popular history. It is unlikely to feature on many undergraduate reading lists or to be prominent on the "must read" list of scholars, but then this is not the audience the author or publisher has in mind.