Toby Barnard – författare

What was life like for Irish Protestants between the mid-seventeenth and the late-eighteenth centuries? In an account filled with entertaining episodes and memorable characters, Toby Barnard scrutinizes social attitudes and structures in every segment of Protestant society during this period and also reassesses Ireland’s place in the British state and empire. "Toby Barnard, unparalleled excavator of Irish social history in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, has published the first volume of his magnum opus investigating the origins of this vanishing world, demonstrating its vitality, quirks and variations as never before."—Ray Foster, Financial Times "Elegant, amusing, engaging, and exceedingly informative."—Homan Potterton, Irish Times

This pioneering study of the material culture of Stuart and Hanoverian Ireland reveals unsuspected richness and diversity of lifestyle, habitat, and mentality. Like its highly praised predecessor, A New Anatomy of Ireland, it abounds with quirky people and vivid scenes and is a striking reappraisal of Ireland under the Protestant Ascendancy.The book ranges from the governing elite of Dublin Castle to Dublin itself, to provincial towns and the countryside beyond, and even to the Irish in Britain and Europe. Toby Barnard describes varied buildings, gardens, pictures, and belongings, showing how possessions highlighted and widened divisions between rich and poor, women and men, Irish Catholics and Protestant settlers. The book allows Ireland for the first time to be integrated into discussions of the pleasures and pains of consumerism.

How did the Protestants gain a monopoly over the running of Ireland and replace the Catholics as rulers and landowners? To answer this question, Toby Barnard:- Examines the Catholics' attempt to regain control over their own affairs, first in the 1640s and then between 1689 and 1691- Outlines how military defeats doomed the Catholics to subjection, allowing Protestants to tighten their grip over the government- Studies in detail the mechanisms - both national and local - through which Protestant control was exercisedFocusing on the provinces as well as Dublin, and on the subjects as well as the rulers, Barnard draws on an abundance of unfamiliar evidence to offer unparalleled insights into Irish lives during a troubled period.