This is a collection of essays produced to mark Roy Fosters retirement from the Carroll Professorship of Irish History at the University of Oxford and to celebrate his exceptional contribution to Irish history. Contributors reflect on his role as teacher, mentor, professional historian, and as student of Irish history himself. The essays engage with key themes in Roy Fosters work, in particular with the uncertainty of the future at any given historical juncture, a theme evident in his research on Parnell, Yeats, Randolph Churchill, Bowen, and, more recently, on the revolutionary generation. Essays range across the post-Union period and cover topics including the land question, constitutional politics, the radicalization of Irish society from 1914, outcomes of revolution, the development of independent Ireland, and the impact of the Northern Irish Troubles. The contributors include scholars whose work has influenced Fosters own research, leading Irish historians who have influenced and been influenced by Foster, and younger scholars who were supervised and/or mentored by Foster and whose work he greatly admires.