An illuminating and enjoyably lop-sided, 'worm's eye view' of the great sweep of Irish history, as experienced by one small County Down village built 'in the middle of nowhere en route to somewhere else'.

Though only five miles from the centre of Belfast, Dundonald is far from being an anonymous suburb. On the contrary it has a rich historical pedigree and a stubbornly independent past.

This is the story of its townlands and their peoples. It looks at the creation of the Dundonald valley some 400 million years ago; life in its stone age village; the 1790s, when it was a nest of dangerous radicals; the picture postcard village that was a favourite setting for novels; through the manic growth of recent years to the Dundonald International Ice Bowl.

It introduces a wealth of new material, and is illustrated with over 160 photographs, maps and line drawing, almost all of them previously unpublished.