Modern Ireland has become so interconnected and technologically advanced that it’s easy to forget that not so long ago, ours was a largely agricultural society with a two-year waiting list just to get a landline phone installed.

Connecting a Nation is a new book from author Deryck Fay examining the story of Ireland’s extraordinary development in telecommunications, from the arrival of the first telegraph in the mid nineteenth century to the world of data centres and mobile phones we live in today.