Irish Impressions: Free Audiobook and Listening Guide

Irish Impressions, credited to G. K. Chesterton, is available as a LibriVox volunteer audiobook. This guide identifies the recording, its source summary and its audio tracks.

About the work

The LibriVox catalogue summary, preserved with the recording, reads:

LibriVox recording of Irish Impressions by G. K. Chesterton, read by Ray Clare. “For the Irish Question has never been discussed in England. Men have discussed Home Rule; but those who advocated it most warmly, and as I think wisely, did not even know what the Irish meant by Home. Men have talked about Unionism; but they have never even dared to propose Union. A Unionist ought to mean a man who is not even conscious of the boundary of the two countries; who can walk across the frontier of fairyland, and not even notice the walking haystack. As a fact, the Unionist always shoots at the haystack; though he never hits it. But the limitation is not limited to Unionists; as I have already said, the English Radicals have been quite as incapable of going to the root of the matter. Half the case for Home Rule was that Ireland could not be trusted to the English Home Rulers. They also, to recur to the parable, have been unable to take the talking cow by the horns; for I need hardly say that the talking cow is an Irish bull. What has been the matter with their Irish politics was simply that they were English politics. They discussed the Irish Question; but they never seriously contemplated the Irish Answer.” (Quotation from Gilbert Keith Chesterton)

Recording facts

• Recording title: Irish Impressions
• Author credits: G. K. Chesterton
• Language: English
• Original MP3 tracks: 9
• Listed recording duration: 4:17:49

Catalogue topics

• audio books
• essays
• Ireland

Track guide

1. Chapter 1 - Two Stones in a Square — 15:15
2. Chapter 2 - The Root of Reality — 30:13
3. Chapter 3 - The Family and the Feud — 22:20
4. Chapter 4 - The Paradox of Labor — 26:58
5. Chapter 5 - The Englishman in Ireland — 23:03
6. Chapter 6 - The Mistake of England — 28:25
7. Chapter 7 - The Mistake of Ireland — 32:46
8. Chapter 8 - An Example and a Question — 37:09
9. Chapter 9 - Belfast and the Religious Problem — 41:41

Listen to this recording

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Source and rights

This is a record from LibriVox's official Internet Archive collection, with a public-domain licence recorded in its metadata. LibriVox's policy includes its catalogue summaries as well as its recordings. Its public-domain assessment follows United States law; copyright status can differ elsewhere. The summary and track facts are reproduced and reformatted from that record. Dates attached to the archive upload are not treated as original book publication dates.