Monthly Archives: December 2022

Through lack of understanding of macroeconomics and financial markets, a new UK government turns a fiscal and political challenge into a financial crisis, leading to an austerity-driven humanitarian catastrophe. The year is 1847, not 2022.

This is the core argument of Cambridge historian Charles Read’s The Great Famine in Ireland and Britain’s Financial Crisis. By exploring private correspondence of leading policymakers of the day and highlighting discrepancies with their public statements and historical perceptions, the author interrogates their underlying motivations. In the process, he nails a number of established myths.

*** A version of this book review was first published in The Irish Times on 29 December 2022 ***