Rent a historian

What exactly does Marianne Elliott mean by saying that "the Irish landlord may have been largely rehabilitated by historians" (Books, THES, January 24)?

What historians like W. E. Vaughan have shown is that the typical Irish landlord could behave in a way that is quite removed from the popular caricature, but this is not at all the same as saying that the system of landlordism which Parnell, Davitt and others fought to dismantle has been rehabilitated.

Dick Barrett

Learning resources University of Luton