Our coastal islands possess fascinating stories but the almost countless islands on Irish lakes have their fair share of stories too: an abandoned hippy colony on Roeillaun in Lough Corrib Co Galway; a round tower sacked by the Vikings on Devenish Island, Co Fermanagh. 

The victims of the Great Famine were not just the poor, as new research shows that many middle-class people, including lawyers and doctors, ended up in the workhouse.