This is a book with a difference. It is not about the Famine, but of the Famine. Told in diary form, it chronicles the unfolding calamity through the eyes of those at the coalface, some of them victims, many others priests and ministers, striving heroically to alleviate the plight of their starving flocks.

In Their Own Words scuppers many of the popularly held misconceptions about the famine. It reveals many of the forgotten heroes and exposes some of the villains of that awful period. Among the former, Joseph Bewley and Jonathan Pim spear-headed an extraordinary Quaker enterprise in North Connacht which succeeded in saving numerous lives. Another hero was a Polish count who, as agent of the British Association, fed thousands of school-children. The villains were mostly locals, merchants making exorbitant profits and landlords like Lord Lucan using the tragedy as a pretext for wholesale evictions.
With most of the material here never published before, In Their Own Words makes a major contribution to a better understanding of the Famine.