"He [Tolkien] described Ireland as a country naturally evil.."

It's believed that Tolkien imagined the Irish landscape as being filled with the glamour & ferocious weirdness that permeates Irish myth - He much preferred the sober morality found in Old English tales.

Desmond Fennell Irish Liberalism is just "second hand Englishness"

23 April 1014: "The great war between High King Brian Boru and the Foreigners of Dublin." - Irish forces defeat the Vikings at Clontarf.

Brian Boru's alliance against the Vikings was vast - dozens of Irish and Scottish kings fought and died for him at the Battle of Clontarf.

"I have been where warriors wrestled / High in Erin sang the sword."

The Battle of Clontarf through the eyes of an Icelandic Viking.

The Raven banner is taken! Boru's army chase the vanquished Dublin Vikings into the sea. The Battle of Clontarf, 1014 - W.H. Holbrooke.

In 1013 the Danes seized the English throne. Pending renewed Viking invasion, Brian gathered his might to save his young Irish Kingdom:

The Lough Derg Sword, typical of the Viking-style swords wielded by the Irish - Found in Tipperary, Brian Boru’s powerbase, 11th c.

"And the Irish will long suffer from a sorrow that will never grow old for men." Viking curse upon the Irish for Clontarf defeat; Njál Saga

The Viking leader Bródar enters the royal tent of Brian Boru, fulfilling the battle prophecy of '..Irish victory - but King Brian's death.'

BRIAN BORU - Imperator Scotorum - Emperor of the Irish.

One of the few men to realise a united, Gaelic Ireland.

Irish language poem (translated) written in the Viking Age:

On May 3rd 1916, on orders of the General Courts Martial, the British Army began a series of executions of Irish "traitors and rebels".

In doing so they began Ireland's First War of Independence.