While the reigns of England's Angevin kings, Henry II, Richard I and John, have sparked centuries of historical interest, the verdicts rendered have been as diverse as the times that produced them. Increasingly, historians have come to highlight the abrasiveness of Angevin kingship in general when discussing the great calamities of John’s reign (including the loss of Normandy in 1204, Magna Carta, and the civil war of 1215–17), before recounting John’s unique depravity.

Writing to a ‘Friend in Scotland’, in 1888, the Rev. Hugh Hanna declared: ‘it is the duty of Christian people in these lands to do the best they can for all parts of the United Kingdom’. Having explained why Irish Protestants were opposed to home rule, he then asked how any

At the beginning of the twentieth century, land purchase in Ireland conducted in compliance with the land-purchase acts passed by the British government between 1881 and 1896 had ground to a virtual standstill. The numbers within the landlord class who wished to sell had been exhausted, yet tenants were anxious for a comprehensive land-purchase measure. The Wyndham Land Act was introduced in the House of Commons on 25 March 1903. The act – the pinnacle of George Wyndham's term of office as chief secretary of Ireland – was hailed as one of the most important pieces of social legislation since the Act of Union.

In her vivid account of the Irish theatre movement, Máire Colum described the first evening of Lady Gregory's Gaol Gate at the Abbey Theatre on 20 October 1906. The performance was delayed until Yeats arrived; he was accompanied by a tall woman dressed in black. As soon as they appeared, there was a violent reaction in a section of the audience:

It is now almost impossible to reflect upon the historical reputations of Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins without considering the recent war in Northern Ireland (c. 1969–97) and the challenges to Irish identities it has induced. In the Republic this is evident in the movement away from irredentist nationalism toward official recognition of partition, following a constitutional referendum in 1998. Against a similarly barometric historiography, de Valera and Collins's historical representations have transformed. De Valera, it is clear, long since fell from favour among mainstream nationalists.