Irish Civil War

On the morning of 11 October 1921, the world’s media watched as Michael Collins, leader of the ‘Irish murder gang’, bounded through the door of 10 Downing Street. Moments later, he shook hands with the British Prime Minister. So began the first day of the most important political negotiations in modern Anglo-Irish history. Nearly two months later, in the early hours of 6 December 1921, the talks culminated in the signing of what in Ireland is known simply as ‘the Treaty’ – a document that had been designed to end one violent conflict, but which soon gave rise to another. A ...

It’s a blazing summer when two men arrive in a small village in the West of Ireland. One of them is coming home. Both of them are coming to get rich. One of them is coming to die.

A vivid account of the people who lived through the revolutionary period, whether as occupants of the country houses (both large and small), their servants, members of the IRA or the Free State army, or ordinary people living in the countryside caught up in the tides of war. The research is meticulous and is based on an extraordinarily wide range of sources, both published and unpublished, including compensation claims in the National Archives, witness statements given to the Bureau of Military History, and contemporary Irish and UK newspapers. One of the most valuable sources is the family...

GOLD MEDAL WINNER for BEST PUBLISHED HISTORICAL FICTION! Florida Writer's Association 2022 Royal Palm Literary Award Competition "... a well-written novel full of suspense, heartache, romance, and intrigue. Readers will be swept away..." Historical Novel Society Scotland and Ireland in the 17th and 18th Centuries — an age of unrelenting civil wars, religious conflicts, natural disasters, and treachery at the highest level Fulfilling a once-abandoned dream, young Alexander Moorhead and his mother risk their lives on a perilous voyage to America in 1764. During the long months at sea, Alex ...

Did you know that a poet named William Drennan was the first to name Ireland the “Emerald Island”? He was referring to the green hills of Ireland’s countryside in his poem “When Erin first rose”. The countryside is what defines Ireland probably the best since, for a long time, it played a major role in the economy and culture of the nation.

Spiritual Wounds challenges the widespread belief that the contentious events of the Irish Civil War (1922–23) were covered in a total blanket of silence. The book uncovers an archive of published testimonies by pro- and antitreaty men and women, written in both English and Irish. Most of the testimonies discussed were produced in the 1920s and 1930s, and nearly all have been overlooked in historical study to date. Revolutionaries went to great lengths to testify to the ‘spiritual wounds’ of civil war: they adopted fictionalised disguises, located their writings in other places or ...

When the Irish Invaded Canada is the untold tale of a band of fiercely patriotic Irish Americans and their chapter in Ireland's centuries-long fight for independence. Inspiring, lively, and often undeniably comic, this is a story of fighting for what's right in the face of impossible odds.

The number of evictions in Balinmore, Ireland is on the rise. Eamonn McDonagh feels that he must resist the English landlord who is responsible for the misery experienced by the Irish people in his town, so he forms a secret society known as "The Black Thorn." He warns his oppressor that violence will erupt in Balinmore if the evictions continue, which they do. The next person evicted is Eamonn's sister. Watching all of the violence that ensues is McDonagh's ten year old son, Joseph, who is caught between the gentle example of his priest and the violent actions of his father. So begins the ...

The violence and divisions caused by the Irish Civil War of 1922–23 were more vicious, bitter and protracted in County Kerry than anywhere else in Ireland. For generations, the fratricide, murder and executions that occurred there have been synonymous with the worst excesses of the brutality which followed the split over the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921. In this compelling new history of the conflict in his native county, Owen O’Shea offers fresh insights into atrocities such as the landmine executions at Ballyseedy and Knocknagoshel, and their cover-ups, and also the misery and mayhem of...

Almost a century after his untimely death in 1922, this lively and insightful new assessment explores the man Michael Collins described as ‘father of us all’ and reclaims Arthur Griffith as the founder of both Sinn Féin and the Irish Free State. Since his death when President of Dáil Éireann, Griffith’s role has often been misrepresented. Too radical for some, he was not militant enough for others. His legacy belongs to no single political party today. Colum Kenny argues that efforts to ‘other’ Griffith as ‘un-Irish’ raise uncomfortable questions about Irish identity. A ...

General Liam Lynch was a key figure in the Irish Revolution and remains one of the most celebrated IRA leaders of his era. His republicanism was shaped both by his upbringing in Limerick and by the aftermath of the Easter Rising. By the time of the War of Independence, Lynch was in command of the IRA’s Cork No. 2 Brigade and masterminded some of the most important actions against British forces, such as the Fermoy arms raid and the daring kidnapping of British General Cuthbert Lucas. Adamantly opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty, regarding it a betrayal of the Irish Republic, Lynch became ...

The spectre of ‘the Disappeared’, those abducted, secretly executed and their bodies buried in remote locations, has overshadowed the debate around the legacy of the Troubles in Northern Ireland for the last two decades. Yet what most people don’t realise is that ‘forced disappearances’ have been part of violent political conflicts in Ireland for over 200 years. This groundbreaking book, the first of its kind, looks at the history of this practice in Ireland and identifies all known victims over the last century, from the North King Street Massacre in 1916 right up to 2003. Ó ...

This is the extraordinary life story of Ernie O’Malley (1897-1957), one of Ireland’s most complex and influential Republican figures, and later an acclaimed writer. Born in Castlebar in 1897, O’Malley became devoted to Ireland’s fight for freedom at an early age. As a twenty-three-year-old IRA Commandant-General, leading 7,000 volunteers in the brutal War of Independence, and later IRA senior commander during the Civil War, he was captured three times, severely tortured, escaped twice, wounded fourteen times and survived a forty-one-day hunger strike. What distinguishes ...

In July 1936, an army-led coup against the democratically elected republican government ushered in the Spanish Civil War. Father Alexander J. McCabe was rector of the Irish College in Salamanca when General Francisco Franco seized power a few months later and established his GHQ in the medieval city. McCabe recorded the arrival of the nationalist war machine in his diaries, vividly documenting the horror of the repression and his encounters with Franco, Nazi officers and diplomats, British and American spies and journalists, and adventurers and charlatans from around the world who flocked ...

In July 1927, at just thirty-five years old, Kevin O’Higgins was assassinated on his way to Mass in Booterstown, Co. Dublin. A reviled figure for anti-Treaty republicans, O’Higgins became the target of particular venom for his vocal support of the Free State government’s execution policy during the Civil War, which saw seventy-seven IRA men executed, including the best man at his wedding, Rory O’Connor. In Walled in By Hate, Arthur Mathews examines not just the life and death of O’Higgins, focussing on that most acrimonious time in his life, but also those of his contemporaries, ...

Arguably the most significant figure in Ireland’s fight against TB, this sensitive and compelling biography tells the fascinating story of Dorothy Stopford Price. Unjustly forgotten, Price made heroic efforts to rid Ireland of tuberculosis and was responsible for the introduction of the BCG vaccine to Ireland. MacLellan recounts a remarkable life, offering a fascinating insight into Price’s Anglo-Irish background, her startling involvement in the struggle for Irish independence and her brilliant and controversial medical career in the newly-independent state.