This wide-ranging Companion to Modern British and Irish Drama offers challenging analyses of a range of plays in their political contexts. It explores the cultural, social, economic and institutional agendas that readers need to engage with in order to appreciate modern theatre in all its complexity.
- An authoritative guide to modern British and Irish drama.
- Engages with theoretical discourses challenging a canon that has privileged London as well as white English males and realism.

A Concise Companion to Contemporary British and Irish Drama investigates key issues in British and Irish theatre since 1979. Covering topics from globalisation, genocide and terrorism to the use of new technologies, and physical and verbatim theatre practices, this volume illustrates the extraordinary diversity of contemporary drama and performance.

Robert Browning, whose normality in appearance and conversation pleased sensible folk and shocked idolaters, summed up in two stanzas the difference between the popular conception of a poet and the real truth. One might almost take the first stanza as representing the Irish and the second the English temperament.

Mike Cronin “Irish History For Dummies"
A rip-roaring ride through the history of the Emerald Isle
Ireland’s story is an amazingly dramatic and intense one – and today the influence of Irish culture can be felt around the globe. This book helps you find out why, taking you on a rollercoaster journey through the highs and lows of Ireland’s past including invasions, battles, executions, religious divide, uprisings, emigration – and Riverdance!
Mike Cronin is a lecturer at the Centre for Irish Programmes, Boston College, Dublin. He has written 5 books on Irish history.
Discover:
When and how Ireland became Celtic
Ireland and Britain’s complex relationship
The evolution of Irish culture
How Irish emigration has affected the world
Northern Ireland’s rocky road to peace

Ireland and Scotland: Literature and Culture, State and Nation, 1966-2000 (Oxford English Monographs)
By Ray Ryan  

While political connections between Ireland and Scotland have been vigorously promoted in recent years, Ray Ryan presents the first sustained, comparative study of literature and culture from both sites. Ryan's focus is on the Irish state and the Scottish nation. How does literature from the Republic create the cultural shape and personality of the Irish state? Through comparison with Scotland, a stateless nation, Ryan argues that crucial themes in Irish culture emerge with new force and clarity: themes such as Republicanism and colonialism, the city and rural divide, and the partition of the island into separate 'southern' and 'northern' spheres. Analysing a broad range of Irish and Scottish literary texts, Ryan shifts attention from the traditionally defined canon of Irish culture, and establishes the relevance of Scotland for any future discussion of Irish cultural contexts. Offering a radical intervention across a range of disciplines, this book is essential reading for all those working on Ireland, on Scotland, and on contemporary English and British culture.