What turned a natural disaster into a human disaster was the determination of senior British officials to use relief policy as an instrument of nation-building in their oldest and most recalcitrant colony. The immediate cause of the famine was a bacterial infection of the potato crop on which too many the Irish poor depended. This is a brilliant, compassionate retelling of that awful story for a new generation - the first account for the general reader for many years and a triumphant example of narrative non-fiction at its best. By its end, the island's population of eight million had shrunk by a third through starvation, disease and emigration. The Irish famine that began in 1845 was one of the nineteenth century's greatest disasters.
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