In The Land of Nod is the fourth and final volume of Hubert Butler's essays and crowns a remarkable literary odyssey. As Neal Ascherson writes: 'When the first collection appeared in 1985 he was already an old man/ His fame began to spread across his native Ireland and then across the world. By the time of his death in 1991 readers throughout Europe and America were asking in amazement why he had not been part of their common culture before.' This final offering contains some of Butler's m...

A third volume of essays – autobiographical, polemical, political, exploratory – by the most distinctive Irish writer of the age, in the highest tradition of Swift and Shaw. Hubert Butler's remarkable consistency of vision and clarity of mind make him unique among Irish essayists in reconciling diversity of content with unity of impression. The focus of his writing is local, its force and application universal. Like Chekhov, he is an abiding humanist whose work evinces an unsurpassed moral...

When it was first published in 1972, Hubert Butler's pioneering masterwork was received with scepticism by his contemporaries. He used linguistics to trace the origins of myths and saints back to pre-Celtic Ireland and Europe, and showed how these stories and names – ancestors of half-forgotten tribes – became absorbed by Christian mythology. The early Irish wove their stories, as did the Greeks, the Hebrews and all early peoples, from the migration of tribes and by wordplay with their tim...

An important study of the dynamics behind Tone's ideal, which disentangles the roots of racialism and nationalism in Ireland, and questions the causes of division between North and South. Hubert Butler contends – with precision and passion – that the way forward lies through an understanding of the past and a return to the world of small-scale and personal dimensions.

When it was first published in 1972, Hubert Butler's pioneering masterwork was received with scepticism by his contemporaries. He used linguistics to trace the origins of myths and saints back to pre-Celtic Ireland and Europe, and showed how these stories and names – ancestors of half-forgotten tribes – became absorbed by Christian mythology. The early Irish wove their stories, as did the Greeks, the Hebrews and all early peoples, from the migration of tribes and by wordplay with their tim...

With Escape from the Anthill, his first volume of essays, Hubert Butler became universally acclaimed as one of Ireland's most enduring and distinctive writers. In this long-awaited sequel he writes with emphasis on Europe and travel in Russia, China, the Adriatic and America during the mid-century.

'Opening Hubert Butler's book of essays is like discovering gold. He has all the essayists's gifts: a clear, strong prose, a fascination with everyday affairs and their significance sub specie aeternitatis, a readiness to generalize, the ability to digress without wondering from the point, to inform without pedantry and enlighten without condescension, to give us pleasure simply by sharing his thoughts. I have touched only on the provocative riches contained in this excellent book. It will...

The Appleman and the Poet, the fifth volume of Hubert Butler's essays, completes a thirty-year odyssey embarked upon by The Lilliput Press in 1984. Our flagship author has finally come home, welcomed by Fintan O'Toole in his foreword: 'One of the great joys of these essays is the discovery of sentences as sharp and lithe as a Toledo rapier.' Beginning with 'Russian Dispatches 1932–1946,' Butler gives an evocative description – from the viewpoint of a bourgeois teacher – of a society in dis...

A third volume of essays – autobiographical, polemical, political, exploratory – by the most distinctive Irish writer of the age, in the highest tradition of Swift and Shaw. Hubert Butler's remarkable consistency of vision and clarity of mind make him unique among Irish essayists in reconciling diversity of content with unity of impression. The focus of his writing is local, its force and application universal. Like Chekhov, he is an abiding humanist whose work evinces an unsurpassed moral...

In The Land of Nod is the fourth and final volume of Hubert Butler's essays and crowns a remarkable literary odyssey. As Neal Ascherson writes: 'When the first collection appeared in 1985 he was already an old man/ His fame began to spread across his native Ireland and then across the world. By the time of his death in 1991 readers throughout Europe and America were asking in amazement why he had not been part of their common culture before.' This final offering contains some of Butler's m...

With Escape from the Anthill, his first volume of essays, Hubert Butler became universally acclaimed as one of Ireland's most enduring and distinctive writers. In this long-awaited sequel he writes with emphasis on Europe and travel in Russia, China, the Adriatic and America during the mid-century.

'This is a cri de coeur from an honest, intelligent and patriotic Englishman desperately worried about the corruption of this country and the likely effects of its lurch into the clutches of a European.' - The SpectatorHitchens identifies everything that he feels has gone wrong with Britain since the Second World War and makes the case for the 'many millions who feel that they have become foreigners in their own land and wish with each succeeding day that ...