The idea for this book predates not only my trilogy on colonial rebellion but my decision to produce the Reconsidering Chartism series. Its gestation began in 2003 with an off-hand comment by a student during a session on European influences on Chartism in the 1840s. She asked: 'what impact did Chartism have on the rest of the world?' I have spent the years since trying to find an answer and this has taken me in directions I could not have anticipated when it all began. Although much has been written about Chartism in Britain, though considerably less on Ireland, when I started work on this...

The reputation of the Normans in the eleventh century as conquerors is as much the result of their patronage of historical writing as to their military abilities. By eleventh century standards, Norman military activities are well documented especially in the narrative accounts of their exploits in Italy. By 1100, three different chroniclers had independently of each other produced full-length accounts of the conquests in southern Italy and Sicily. The first chronicler Amatus of Montecassino composed his History of the Normans within a few years of the death of Richard I of Capua, a generous...