Book review: An Island's Law – A Bibliographical Guide to Ireland's Legal Past. By William Nial Osborough. [Dublin: Four Courts Press. 2013. 142 pp. Hardback €31.50. ISBN 978-1-84682-416-6.]

It is often said that Ireland is still awaiting its Holdsworth. In fact scholars have been lamenting the lack of a comprehensive legal history of Ireland long before William Searle Holdsworth wrote his monumental, if flawed, History of English Law. Calls for the creation of a comprehensive text on Ireland’s legal past have been heard since at least the 1840s. The nineteenth century historian James Hardiman exhorted future scholars by emphasising the "abundance of recorded materials" awaiting them. (Tracts Relating to Ireland, vol. ii, (Dublin 1843), p.14). Alas, much of this source material was lost forever during the Irish civil war in 1922 with the destruction of most of the legal documents stored in the Public Record Office located at Dublin’s Four Courts.