When I first picked up Gunter Burkhardt’s Tipperary, my mind, jumped to the famous First World War marching song “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary.” I had always pictured this yearned-for land, so far from the realities of war, as an imagined one, with the name chosen for its musicality perhaps. It was quite the discovery to learn that Tipperary is actually Ireland’s largest inland county, famed for much more than its wartime hit.
