Arguments about the Irish Union provided an unprecedented opportunity for the exploitation of the print medium in shaping public opinion. Pamphlets became the principal weapons in a struggle for ideological…

Underlying this polished and stimulating critique is a sombre awareness of literature’s contribution to political malaise, and a call for an engagement with the real forces that govern people’s lives.

Northman is the first ever biography of John Hewitt, whom the Irish writing generation of Seamus Heaney regarded as ‘the daddy of us all’.