Vanishing Kingdoms : Irish chiefs and their families / Walter J.P. Curley ; foreward by charles Lysaght

Includes bibliographical references and index

This book combines an account of aristocracy and its history in Ireland with an interview-based description of twenty recognized Irish Chiefs of the name and their family backgrounds. Three of them, the O'Brien, O'Connor Don and the O'Neill, have legitimate claims to high kingship; all are descendants of territorial kings and sub-kings. For the most part shorn of their privileges and territories in a democratized, socially fluid Ireland of the twenty-first century, as a group the chiefs exercise a continuing fascination and a living link to the past, leaving an imaginative yet tangible mark on the Irish landscape