Clare Carroll's book finally fills a gap through a ground-breaking and extremely well-researched analysis. Indeed, prior to her investigation, very little had been produced on the Irish community which established itself in Rome during the early modern period.

Carroll's investigation uses as a common fil rouge the theme of exile and how it affected the experience of the Irish who decided to establish themselves in Rome. Beginning with the arrival in the city of the Ulster earls in 1608, the author demonstrates, through a meticulous combination of different sources – archival, artistic and literary – how and to what extent the idea and image of Irish natio began to emerge and spread in Rome. The analysis then focuses on the most prominent Irishman exiled in the city, the Franciscan Luke Wadding. Using as a point of entry Wadding's most famous literary achievements – the Annales Minorum – Carroll explains how the Franciscan developed a ‘global’ outlook on Irish history and on his own order. The representation of Irish identity, forged and influenced by exile, is also examined via the Aula Maxima of St Isidore, which was at the heart of the intellectual activity of the Irish Franciscans. According to the author the frescoes and the paintings in the Aula provide a clear example of the ‘transculturation’ of Irish into Roman, and more broadly, European culture of that period. Another tangible example of the transculturation of Irish identity emerges in the case of the Grammatica Latino-Hibernica, published by Propaganda Fide in 1677. This was the first printed Irish grammar, and would funnel a new sense of Irishness, blended with Roman Catholicism, back to native Ireland. In chapter v the author focuses upon Oliver Plunkett to demonstrate how a cleric fully trained in the Roman mould had to adapt to an hostile context which brought a strong sense of disillusionment. Chapter vi then examines the Irish Protestants who were accepted into the Ospizio dei Convetendi, a charitable institution founded in 1677, and how they had to share their exilic experience in a global context where they lived side-by-side with other Protestants from all over the world. The last two chapters illustrate the case of Charles Wogan, an Irish Jacobite at the Stuart court of Rome, and the struggle of the students of the Irish College against the government of the Italian rectors. Both experiences are linked by a common feature: the sense of disillusionment and the danger of being completely assimilated into the host society.

In conclusion Carroll's book is a must-read text which has shed light on the multifaceted – and thorny – experience of the Irish exiled in Rome from the early seventeenth century up until the late eighteenth century. Through a magisterial use of a wide array of primary sources the author has finally brought into the light one of the least known, but interesting, foreign communities of Rome.