With a state visit by Queen Elizabeth II to the Irish Republic expected in 2009, the first royal visit since 1911, Mary Kenny traces the complex relationship between the Irish and the British Crown. Based on unique access to the Royal Archives in Windsor, and other historical material as well as on personal memoir, Mary Kenny reveals some previously unappreciated aspects of the Crown and Shamrock, including Edward VII’s exceptionally benign attitudes to Catholics, George V’s obsessive worries about civil war between North and South, and how Ireland was constitutionally altered (and morally riven) by the Abdication Crisis of 1936. The author of Goodbye to Catholic Ireland , Mary Kenny also traces the parallel rise of ‘Ireland’s Alternative Monarchy’, the Pope, and the ceremonial role of the Catholic church which all but replaced the ritual of discarded royalty. An engaging and refreshing study of Ireland’s relationship with the British Crown, this is a timely and compelling book.