Ireland

Ireland has the shape of a saucer: a rim of coastal mountains around a low, damp centre of limestone, lakes and peat bog. The Shannon, the longest river in Ireland or Britain, drains that middle ground through a chain of loughs. Atlantic swells pound the Cliffs of Moher, orchids and alpine flowers share the bare karst of the Burren, and Carrauntoohil in Kerry is the highest summit. Mild ocean air keeps frost rare and rain frequent.

Farmers raised the passage tomb at Newgrange around 3200 BC, aligned so the midwinter sunrise lights its inner chamber. St Patrick’s fifth-century mission began a monastic culture that produced the Book of Kells. Anglo-Normans landed in 1169, and English rule later spread through plantations of settlers. The Great Famine of 1845–49 killed or drove abroad a vast share of the people. The Easter Rising of 1916 led to a war of independence, and in 1922 the Irish Free State was founded while Northern Ireland stayed in the United Kingdom.

Hurling, played with an ash stick and a small leather ball, and Gaelic football fill Croke Park for the All-Ireland finals. Pub sessions of fiddles and uilleann pipes keep old dance tunes alive, and Joyce, Yeats, Beckett and Heaney gave a small island a towering place in literature. Grass-fed herds supply Kerrygold butter and beef, Guinness has been brewed at St James’s Gate since 1759, and American technology and drug firms run European operations from Dublin and Cork.