Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It's English, but sure don't be lettin that bother ya, 30 April 2001
By A Customer
One of the most amusing moments in this book is where the author is asked for some of his books by someone wanting to find out about Irish history, only to reject them as "propaganda" when he finds out they are published in Britain.It's a worry he needn't have had, as this is a wonderfully fair-minded and even-handed account of the Irish diaspora, filled with charming anecdotes like the one above. The author sets himself a monumental task; like a coffin-ship captain during the famine, he has to decide who to leave in and who to leave out, sometimes this results in biblical lists of people who are household names only in their own communities, which is the books biggest weakness. This is an optimistic books with a positive outlook on the future of the Irish diaspora and of Irish relations with Britain. Though the author's colours are nailed firmly to the nationalist mast and he reminds us more often than is necessacary what a bogus, vapid ideology "loyalism" is, he recognises the complexities of Anglo-Irish relations and their long, tangled history. Ranging in scope from Patagonia to Japan and from the era of medieval monks to that of the World Wide Web, this is a major, impressive, necessacary work.
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
5 for effort, 1 for execution, 10 Jun 2001
By A Customer
TPC has obviously spent a lot of time researching for this project, and in this respect it is a valuable source for scholars. However, I have some major caveats. His prose is cliched, turgid and over-floral - he constantly refers to himself and how he was wined and dined by the great and the good around the world. No stereotype is left unturned with endless reminders of what a funny, jolly people the Irish are (I'm half Irish myself and I'm not funny) and ceaseless references to drinking and how much the Irish like a pint of Guinness. His reference to the victims of the Birmingham bombings as "innocent civilians" is quite galling too, as if to infer that some civilians are guilty. I fear this is designed for the Irish-American audience who want to hear how great they are and find it difficult to deal with the more difficult aspects of Irish society (ie racism, terrorism). It might have been a good book at half the length and more attention paid by the editor. Sorry if this sounds cruel, but I bought two copies of this and I wish I hadn't. Carlos Quinn, London
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5 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Badly written, standard TPC fare, 13 Dec 2001
By A Customer
Tim Pat has embarked on a circumnavigation of the globe in search of the great and not so great who have strayed far from the shores of the Auld Sod.
I thought that "Wherever Green is Worn" was a turgid and badly executed piece of popular history. The idea itself was fine, but Tim Pat is unable to give a clear and lucid description of anything, preferring instead the path of sentimentalism and ill-informed opinion, as best exemplified by his sustained attack on Ruth Dudley-Edwards (another author I'm no great fan of)... his constant references to dinners given in his honour by various eminences grises and his continuous haranguing of loyalism grate on the reader after a very short while. Too much of this book is wasted with TPC's efforts to portray himself to all and sundry as a typically Irish, garrulous, hale-fellow-well-met type.
There are two main problems with the book. Firstly, the prose itself is poorly written, in the style of a red-top op-ed piece. Secondly, and perhaps more fundamentally, TPC fails to properly analyse the motivations, beliefs, opinions and thoughts of his subject population. Where he attempts to do so, he inevitably fails, resorting instead to the kind of brash sentimantalism which makes everyone in Ireland cringe.
I suppose the effort he put into the work should be applauded, but beyond that, I'd save my pennies rather than wasting them on this unctuous tome.
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