And if you'd like to read an on-the-spot report of the Croppies - the United Irishmen, that is - and the Rising of 1798, take a look for Mary Leadbeater in Google Books.

A writer born and brought up in, and living at the centre of, the Quaker settlement of around 1,000 people in Ballitore, Co Kildare, she was a lifelong correspondent of her old schoolmate and friend Edmund Burke, and an influential voice in her time.

The Annals of Ballitore is now being reissued in a handsome edition by Kildare County Council.