‘Four Courts Press have done it again … a tragic narrative of one of Ireland’s heroes and one of the most destructive and costly wars ever to take place on the island … Dr McGettigan’s analysis of O’Donnell’s motivation puts meat on the bones of a familiar story from a period long before the emergence of a nation state … ’ J. Ardle McArdle. Books Ireland.
‘… Darren McGettigan has advanced a strong case for restoring O’Donnell to a more central place in Irish historical narrative …’ James Kelly, Studia Hibernica.
‘Red Hugh O’Donnell has always been seen as one of the most colourful figures in Irish Military History … For one so well-known, he has received little attention from biographers, making this offering from Dr. McGettigan most welcome’, Donal O’Carroll, The Irish Sword (Winter 2007).
‘The book opens with an effective description of the political and social composition of the O’Donnell lordship of Tír Chonaill [roughly co-terminus with modern county Donegal] in the north-west of Ireland, where, in 1572, Red Hugh was born. McGettigan paints a vivid picture of a complex Gaelic lordship in which various branches of the O’Donnells competed with each other to exert control over smaller lineages … [W]ith its handsome cover … numerous maps, illustrations, plates and clear prose, it will make a most attractive purchase for anyone with even a casual interest in Irish history’, Chistopher Maginn, Breifne: Journal of the Cavan Historical Society.
