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of de Valera and the IRA. Blythe’s fascism, Fitzpatrick explains, was idiosyncratic; it was influenced not by contemporary European movements, but fuelled partly by a fondness for “militaristic rituals” informed by both Orangeism and republicanism, and also by a drive at “greater administrative efficiency” and stability of state (189–90). To conclude, Ernest Blythe in Ulster is an exhaustively researched, carefully thought-out and well-argued analysis of the sum of Blythe’s complex political being, which underlines some interesting commonalities between republicanism and Orangeism. Fitzpatrick’s thesis is laid out in his trademark prose, with all its wit and erudition, amplifying the poignancy of reading what is, sadly, his final contribution to the discipline. If it is not a biography of Blythe, as the author suggests, then it comes fairly close. Fitzpatrick encourages future historians to tackle a “full biography”, subject to the caveat that it “must take into account the astonishing duplicity, even multiplicity, of [Blythe’s] . . . conduct as a young republican” (viii). This the author outlines convincingly and authoritatively, to the extent that any future biography of Blythe will inevitably be a rhapsody on a theme by Fitzpatrick.