If the Nice referendum allowed some to question Ireland's commitment to the European vision, they would be well advised to read Victoria Clark's book. Has the EU too narrow a vision of Europe to embrace those to the east of the faultline separating the Franco-German, Catholic-Protestant, West from the Balkan states, the Slavs and the Greeks? They share a common Orthodox heritage and long for the days when the east was dominated not by Communist Moscow but by Byzantium in all its glory. The besieged people of this book include Greek monks who fear the Schengen agreement will stamp us all with the mark of the beast, 666, through bar codes, Romanian nuns who survived Ceausescu but now fret about secularism, and irrepressible, unrepentant nationalist Serbs. This world is separated from the west more by centuries than by miles, and yet embraces the spledour of remote Mount Athos and the beauty of island Patmos, rarely visited by Westerners and seldom offered to package holiday-makers.
Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties, by Sheila Rowbotham (Penguin,