1691 by Joe Joyce

Description:

It's May 1691 and the decisive year of the war in Ireland is about to get underway. The armies of the English King James and his Dutch usurper King William are on the move again, resuming where they left off for the winter.

The Jacobites have been pushed westwards beyond the River Shannon following their defeat at the Battle of the Boyne the previous year. But they're far from beaten.

Through the personalities of two opposing generals, the Irish Patrick Sarsfield and the Scottish Hugh Mackay, 1691 brings to life the coming sieges and battles that shaped the future of Ireland for centuries to come.

The friendships and feuds, conspiracies and alliances, strategies and tactics are explored in a highly readable fictional account that's true to the historical record of a fateful year.

About the Author:

Joyce's latest novel 1691 is the book his father intended to write but never got around to during his lifetime. An amateur historian of the battle of Aughrim, he built up a collection of artefacts from the battlefield which are now in the village’s interpretative centre about the bloodiest battle ever fought in Ireland.
He would not have written the book as fiction but he would have approved of the novel's factual base. Writing history as fiction provides new perspectives on historical figures, their motives, decisions, and actions. I believe it enhances our understanding of their dilemmas and it challenges our natural assumption that everything that happened was inevitable.