title: Modern Ireland: A Very Short Introduction
author: Senia Paseta
description: <br /><strong>Dr. Paseta</strong> is Tutorial Fellow in Modern History at St. Hugh's College, Oxford. She is the recipient of numerous sholarships and prizes, including the J. G. Crawford Prize for Academic Excellence from the Australian National University.<br />
zlib_text: ![](Images/cover00123.jpeg)
  
  Praise for  
  _The Gentle Traditionalist_
  
  This is one of the most unusual books I’ve ever read. It’s a spiritual
  journey, a romance and a quest; a reflection on history and a discourse on
  faith and tradition; a fable and a meditation about place and location. It’s
  sometimes surreal, sometimes eccentric, sometimes didactic, but written
  throughout with passion and engagement, with a touching and deep-seated love
  for Ireland and for the sweetness and humanity that have been embedded in
  Irish country values. Some readers will want to argue with the text. Others
  will be stimulated to ponder the question whether in the course of
  modernisation, globalised Ireland has lost the essence that was its soul. _—_
  MARY KENNY, author of _Goodbye to Catholic Ireland_ and _Crown and Shamrock_
  
  The Socratic Dialogue is a literary form quite literally as old as Western
  Civilisation. Boethius, Joseph de Maistre, and Vladimir Solovyov—among
  countless others—made use of it to cri