Shane Hegarty and Fintan O’Toole, The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2006, ISBN 0 7171 4191 8, €24.99 hbk, 216 pp.
Richard Killeen, A short history of the Irish revolution, 1912 to 1927, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2007, ISBN 07171 4083 1, €9.99 hbk, 164 pp.
Reviewed in Journal of the Galway Archaeological & Historical Society, vol.60, 2007
One element of the ‘peace dividend’ that flowed from the Good Friday agreement was the opportunity for a broad historical re-engagement with the 1916 Rising, an episode had been rather marginalised during the decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland. During 2006, there were large-scale official commemorations of the 90th anniversary of the rebellion, while the proceedings of a number of academic conferences on the subject were extensively reported. Books focusing on the Rising or dealing with aspects of it – notably Charles Townshend’s 1916: the Irish rebellion (London 2005) and Donal Nevin’s James Connolly: a full life (Dublin 2005) – were widely noticed and prominently displayed in the shops. That the Irish public had a considerable appetite for information about 1916 was indicated by the attendance during the year at lectures and exhibitions, and by the interest in special issues of history periodicals devoted to the subject.
The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising began life in March 2006 as a 16 page newspaper supplement, published in association with the Department of Education and Science. It was positively received – even if there was a minor controversy when a vigilant reader noticed that that one of the historical photographs included was taken as recently as 1964 in order to publicise a film. The photograph, needless to mention, is not to be found in the hard-back edition of the supplement reviewed here.
Although it contains much additional material, the book retains more than a trace of its origins in the supplement – and that is not a criticism. In fact, this is a cornucopia of a publication, well-illustrated and well-designed, with as much of the character of an exhibition as of a conventional history. Seven chapters – sandwiched between a ‘Prelude’ and an ‘Aftermath’ – each deal with the events of a particular day in Dublin, from the Sunday to the Saturday of Easter Week. At the beginning of each of the chapters, there is a helpful resumé of the key developments of the day, with panels employed to introduce the dramatis personae and to provide context for key episodes, such as the capture of Roger Casement and the murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Throughout, the testimony of individual witnesses is used to very good effect. This is a fine publication, therefore, even if it does not quite match the publisher’s claim that it is ‘the most comprehensive and accessible account of Easter Week in print’. It is accessible, certainly, and it will be found useful in classrooms, but, in the opinion of this reviewer, there are more comprehensive works available, including Charles Townshend’s mentioned above.
A flaw which undermines the claim to comprehensiveness is an almost exclusive focus on Dublin (two pages and some passing references deal with events outside that city). It is true that, due to several last minute hitches, armed conflict at Easter 1916 was largely confined to Dublin,. But the Rising had been conceived and planned as a country-wide event, and neither the motivations nor the actions of its organisers can be fully understood if preparations and mobilisations at regional level are treated as cursorily as they are here. There is an unfortunate error too, in the use of the following quotation from the Galway Express: ‘Easter Monday 1916 has made history in Ireland. But, oh what rank nauseating stains will besmear its pages! How generations yet unborn will burn with shame when, in the calm light of detailed and exalted impartiality, they scan its humiliating chapter’. Strong stuff, but not, as claimed by Hegarty and O’Toole, an example of the ‘mainstream nationalist’ reaction to the Rising, for the Galway Express in 1916 was still very much the Unionist paper it had been since its foundation in 1853. Evidently, the possibility that a Unionist newspaper more venerable than their own might have been published in the far west did not strike these Irish Times journalists.
The events of 1916 feature prominently also in Richard Killeen’s Short history of the Irish revolution, 1912 to 1927. Killeen is a prolific author of works on Irish history directed at the uninitiated – his Short history of Ireland was reviewed in this journal just last year. This book is written in an accessible if didactic style, it is informed by recent scholarship on the period, and, like the other book reviewed here, it is well-illustrated. As an introduction to key figures and critical events, it might be recommended to somebody completely unfamiliar with Irish history.
Richard Killeen, A short history of the Irish revolution, 1912 to 1927, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan, 2007, ISBN 07171 4083 1, €9.99 hbk, 164 pp.
Reviewed in Journal of the Galway Archaeological & Historical Society, vol.60, 2007
One element of the ‘peace dividend’ that flowed from the Good Friday agreement was the opportunity for a broad historical re-engagement with the 1916 Rising, an episode had been rather marginalised during the decades of armed conflict in Northern Ireland. During 2006, there were large-scale official commemorations of the 90th anniversary of the rebellion, while the proceedings of a number of academic conferences on the subject were extensively reported. Books focusing on the Rising or dealing with aspects of it – notably Charles Townshend’s 1916: the Irish rebellion (London 2005) and Donal Nevin’s James Connolly: a full life (Dublin 2005) – were widely noticed and prominently displayed in the shops. That the Irish public had a considerable appetite for information about 1916 was indicated by the attendance during the year at lectures and exhibitions, and by the interest in special issues of history periodicals devoted to the subject.
The Irish Times Book of the 1916 Rising began life in March 2006 as a 16 page newspaper supplement, published in association with the Department of Education and Science. It was positively received – even if there was a minor controversy when a vigilant reader noticed that that one of the historical photographs included was taken as recently as 1964 in order to publicise a film. The photograph, needless to mention, is not to be found in the hard-back edition of the supplement reviewed here.
Although it contains much additional material, the book retains more than a trace of its origins in the supplement – and that is not a criticism. In fact, this is a cornucopia of a publication, well-illustrated and well-designed, with as much of the character of an exhibition as of a conventional history. Seven chapters – sandwiched between a ‘Prelude’ and an ‘Aftermath’ – each deal with the events of a particular day in Dublin, from the Sunday to the Saturday of Easter Week. At the beginning of each of the chapters, there is a helpful resumé of the key developments of the day, with panels employed to introduce the dramatis personae and to provide context for key episodes, such as the capture of Roger Casement and the murder of Francis Sheehy-Skeffington. Throughout, the testimony of individual witnesses is used to very good effect. This is a fine publication, therefore, even if it does not quite match the publisher’s claim that it is ‘the most comprehensive and accessible account of Easter Week in print’. It is accessible, certainly, and it will be found useful in classrooms, but, in the opinion of this reviewer, there are more comprehensive works available, including Charles Townshend’s mentioned above.
A flaw which undermines the claim to comprehensiveness is an almost exclusive focus on Dublin (two pages and some passing references deal with events outside that city). It is true that, due to several last minute hitches, armed conflict at Easter 1916 was largely confined to Dublin,. But the Rising had been conceived and planned as a country-wide event, and neither the motivations nor the actions of its organisers can be fully understood if preparations and mobilisations at regional level are treated as cursorily as they are here. There is an unfortunate error too, in the use of the following quotation from the Galway Express: ‘Easter Monday 1916 has made history in Ireland. But, oh what rank nauseating stains will besmear its pages! How generations yet unborn will burn with shame when, in the calm light of detailed and exalted impartiality, they scan its humiliating chapter’. Strong stuff, but not, as claimed by Hegarty and O’Toole, an example of the ‘mainstream nationalist’ reaction to the Rising, for the Galway Express in 1916 was still very much the Unionist paper it had been since its foundation in 1853. Evidently, the possibility that a Unionist newspaper more venerable than their own might have been published in the far west did not strike these Irish Times journalists.
The events of 1916 feature prominently also in Richard Killeen’s Short history of the Irish revolution, 1912 to 1927. Killeen is a prolific author of works on Irish history directed at the uninitiated – his Short history of Ireland was reviewed in this journal just last year. This book is written in an accessible if didactic style, it is informed by recent scholarship on the period, and, like the other book reviewed here, it is well-illustrated. As an introduction to key figures and critical events, it might be recommended to somebody completely unfamiliar with Irish history.