This book assesses Ireland's major political, social and cultural developments during this troubled century. With a chronological appraoch to the events that have shaped a nation, this book provides both an impression of day-to-day life in Ireland since 1900, while also offering a political and historical overview of the period. It is a portrait of a nation's struggle to define itself; to translate the strong national identity of the Irish abroad into a coherent homogeneity at home. Blighted, or blessed, with a deeply ambivalent attitude to the power of the English influence over the centuries, the Irish people have for decades been divided between those loyal to the British Crown, and those advocates of Home Rule. This division found formal expression in the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, separating the Protestant North from the new Irish Free State (later the Republic of Ireland) in the South. While this fledgling state established its autonomy, introducing a republican constitution in 1937 and seceding from the Commonwealth in 1949, the identity of the nation as a whole continued to struggle with the difficulties of its perpetual political and religious cleavages. It also examines the artistic and social wealth of a formidable cultural legacy. The influence of writers and poets, artists and playwrights such as Joyce, Yeats, Shaw and Synge is discussed in both social and political contexts, and wider cultural trends are examined in an accessible style. The author shows us Irel