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This is a book with a difference. It is not about the Famine but of the Famine. Told in diary form, it chronicles the unfolding calamity through the eyes of those at the coalface, some of them victims, many other priests and ministers, striving heroically to alleviate the plight of their starving flocks.

In Their Own Words scuppers many of the popularly held misconceptions about the Famine. It reveals many of the forgotten heroes and exposes some of the villains of that awful period. Among the former, Joseph Bewley and Jonathan Pim spear-headed an extraordinary Quaker enterprise in North Connacht which succeeded in saving numerous lives. Another hero was a Polish count who, as agent of the British Association, fed thousands of school-children. The villains were mostly locals, merchants making exorbitant profits and landlords like Lord Lucan using the tragedy as a pretext for wholesale evictions.

With most of the material here never before published, In Their Own Words make a major contribution to a better understanding of the Famine.

About the Author

Liam Swords is a priest of the diocese of Achonry. He spent some years in the Irish College, Paris, as archivist, proviseur and finally as Irish Chaplain in Paris. He researched and wrote the scripts for the Radharc historical series on the Irish diaspora. He is author of Soldiers, Scholars, Priests (1985), The Green Cockade (1989), A Hidden Church: The Diocese of Achonry 1689-1818 (1998), and editor of The Irish French Connection (1977). He is currently researching another volume on the history of the diocese - the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Hardcover. 508 pages