Patrick Joyce is Emeritus Professor of History at Manchester University, and one of the leading social historians of his generation. He has long been a radical and influential voice in debates on the politics and future of social and cultural history. Joyce has held visiting professorships and fellowships at Trinity College Dublin, the University of California at Berkeley, LSE, and elsewhere. His most recent book is a memoir of growing up to Irish parents in London, Going to My Father's House, examining questions of immigration and home.

A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book. Anyone who has ever tried to unravel the intertwined skeins of ancestry, sociology, music, geography and history will gape at Joyce’s skill. On almost every page the reader gets a jolt, a palpable sensation of immersion in the disappeared world of peasantry. A central part of the book is Joyce’s own family’s peasant past. I too, like many people, am only two generations and one language away from these ancestors. Because the time of the peasants is still palpable there are clues and messages here for every fortunate reader who picks up this book

Patrick Joyce is Emeritus Professor of History at Manchester University, and one of the leading social historians of his generation. He has long been a radical and influential voice in debates on the politics and future of social and cultural history. Joyce has held visiting professorships and fellowships at Trinity College Dublin, the University of California at Berkeley, LSE, and elsewhere. His most recent book is a memoir of growing up to Irish parents in London, Going to My Father's House, examining questions of immigration and home.

A dozen pages in I realized that I had been waiting for much of my life to read this extraordinary book. Anyone who has ever tried to unravel the intertwined skeins of ancestry, sociology, music, geography and history will gape at Joyce’s skill. On almost every page the reader gets a jolt, a palpable sensation of immersion in the disappeared world of peasantry. A central part of the book is Joyce’s own family’s peasant past. I too, like many people, am only two generations and one language away from these ancestors. Because the time of the peasants is still palpable there are clues and messages here for every fortunate reader who picks up this book