The hopes and dreams of those who made Ireland
NON-FICTION: Handbook of the Irish Revival: An Anthology of Irish Cultural and Political Writings, 1891-1922. Edited by Declan Kiberd and PJ Matthews. Abbey Theatre Press, €18.90
The argument against the Easter Rising since the late 1960s, with the growth of academic and popular revisionism, has been that it was entirely unnecessary, the product of a mad and hopeless few whose mysticised bloodlust called down death and destruction, against all reasonableness, on Ireland’s capital and its inhabitants.
Many years ago, I worked with a much older fellow journalist who ...