John Banville selects and introduces another virtuoso of Irish literature, bringing Hubert Butler's masterful essays on Ireland to a new audience. 'Hubert Butler is one of the great essayists in the English language, the peer of Hazlitt, Robert Louis Stevenson and George Orwell.' -- John Banville This volume contains an essential selection of Hubert Butler's essays on Ireland, written over four decades: reflective, autobiographical pieces which describe a local habitation and a place, but gravitate unerringly towards the great issues of the day  ? neutrality, partition, censorship, religion, nationalism. With his incisive considerations of individual and political identity, Butler joins the great tradition of Irish libertarians going back to Swift and Burke.--