We Are Besieged

WE ARE BESIEGED by Barbara Fitzgerald was originally published in 1946. This fascinating first novel deals with the burning-out of an Anglo-Irish family in 1922 and what happens to them during the subsequent ten years. The backdrop for most of the novel is a Georgian house in Fitzwilliam Square in Dublin, where the family tries to deal with the new Ireland in their different ways. Two attractive sisters, the self-willed Isobel and the more endearing Caroline, grow up in a society where there are no officers to dance with, no Viceregal Drawing-rooms to assure them position. When the British left Southern Ireland, many of the Anglo-Irish remaining in the country felt like aliens, besieged in a hostile land. While some adapted to the new regime, others, such as Isobel and Caroline's mother, neither could nor would. Their sons and daughters grew up as a generation that could hardly remember the British. Families were divided against themselves, children against their parents.