In my 80 plus years I have witnessed conditions little changed from the eighteenth century to today's world, where man-made satellites, reaching for distant planets, hardly arouse even passing interest. So all I can do is try to make my story, an Irishman's story, as interesting as possible as I weave all the strands of my life together - family, hardship, fun, recklessness, sport, politics and farming, and the incredible changes that have...