Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829–1914
Colin Barr
(CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS, 580 PP, £75)
Tablet bookshop price £67.50 • Tel 020 7799 4064

With Ireland now the pre-eminent anglophone country within the EU, Colin Barr’s Ireland’s Empire: The Roman Catholic Church in the English-Speaking World, 1829-1914 seems very timely. This is a study of how “Hiberno-Roman” (Barr’s coinage) culture came to dominate the “hierarchical Church in the United States, Newfoundland, India, South Africa, Canada, Australia and New Zealand”. Ultimately this domination was so consummate that “by 1914, Irish Catholics across the English-speaking world largely worshipped in the same way, read the same books, were educated by the same religious orders, observed the same social and sexual disciplines … and shared the same heroes, villains and martyrs.”