The real life of Brian Boru

As the 1000th anniversary of Brian Boru’s death approaches, Robert Hume attempts to separate fact from fiction in the Munster king’s momentous battle against the Vikings of Leinster.

ONE thousand years ago, on Good Friday 1014, the Battle of Clontarf was fought just outside Dublin. But how much of what we think we know about the battle is true?

“No battle in Irish history has impressed itself more deeply on the national imagination,” concluded historian John Ryan in 1938.