Ireland, as everyone knows, has more than its fair share of history, and it is a brave soul who tries to capture it all in one volume. James Lydon, an eminent medievalist, is the latest to make the attempt in what he describes as an intended replacement for Edmund Curtis's A History of Ireland that was first published in 1937.

The challenge is to provide a full and nuanced enough narrative history interwoven with discussion of the most important thematic developments. Certainly no mean task when covering over 2,000 years.

What Lydon has produced with The Making of Ireland is a somewhat old-fashioned and conventional narrative history of political developments in Ireland, loosely conceptualised as the process of establishing the Irish state and Irish identity. Within these limitations, he has performed heroically; he has packed in a huge amount of material and has succeeded in replacing Curtis's volume.

Reading Lydon's book, however, one could be forgiven for thinking that, throughout its history, Ireland was inhabited in the main by well-off men, with no visible means of support, who spent their time conspiring, fighting, governing and, of course, praying. At certain times they seem to be joined on the island by large numbers of less well-off people, but these never amount to much. Lydon tells Ireland's story as the story of the country's rulers.

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Is this approach adequate today? Were there really no lower classes, peasants and artisans until the late 18th century?

At a generous estimate there are only 40 individual women listed in an exhaustive index, and this number includes the likes of Elizabeth I, Anne Boleyn, Catherine of Aragon and Queen Henrietta Maria. If one looks up "women" one gets the brazen republican injunction to "see also Cumann na mBan".

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It should not be acceptable today to produce a general history of any country in which the great majority of the population remains invisible. Lydon's political narrative is not relieved by any concern with the lives of the people who inhabited the country.

Only towards the end of the 18th century do members of the lower classes actually begin to put in an appearance, but they are of interest only because they begin to affect the author's political concerns.

More surprising perhaps is the way that the Catholic Church and Irish Catholicism disappear from view in the 19th century. Whether one considers that the country underwent a devotional revolution, evolution or conquest, nevertheless the history of the church is clearly central to any understanding of modern Irish history.

While Lydon has much to say about the church in the early and late Middle Ages, he has nothing of real interest to say about Cardinal Cullen, for example, who only gets a mention for his hostility to Fenianism. A crucial dimension of modern Irish history and indeed of Irish identity is seriously neglected.

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Clearly the utility of this book is severely limited by Lydon's focus on political developments and his failure to explore other themes that are of interest in modern historical work. The end result is a somewhat anachronistic volume, that is a historic monument even as it hits the shelves.

John Newsinger is senior lecturer in history, Bath Spa University College.