Compiling a book of quotes is always a hazardous business. The result can be like a blunderbuss assault - hitting the occasional target, but missing a great deal, making much noise but with no real sense of focus.
To be successful, any book of quotes needs a context and a focus. Anything less will soon weary the reader and question the whole purpose of the exercise. In this case, Conor O'Clery is clear as to what he wants to do, and it is this clarity which gives the book a sense of coherence and ensures that the story is told from as many angles as possible - many of them unexpected.
His focus is essentially political, with strong emphasis on the "national" question, though he does take time off on the way to look at how we were as a people, how we saw each other at key moments on the way. And he is careful to avoid those hoary old chestnuts which have lost any freshness they once had and now end up at chamber of commerce dinners.
This book is a very good example of its genre. It reflects the author's own priorities but never loses sight of its main purpose, that of illustrating the century's history through selected quotes. It takes us from John Ingram's disowning of his ballad, Who Fears to Speak of '98, in 1900, right up to David Ervine telling us in June of this year that "Failure is not an option".
If the book has a weakness, it is one of proportion. We get only five pages on the 1950s and 12 pages on the 1930s and 1940s as against 70 pages on the 1990s. This may reflect the fact that so little happened during those decades or the relative lack of scholarship on those years, but it does give the book a slightly lop-sided appearance.
That said, however, it is highly recommended. There are many gems, much material long forgotten but now happily revived, and an overall sense of material integrated into a quasi-narrative which gives this book a coherence rare in a collection of quotes.
Maurice Manning's James Dillon: A Biography was published in October