Concentrates on the crucial role played by women in Collins' personal and working life. Women like Kathleen Clarke, Leslie Price de Barra, Peg Barrett, Nancy O'Brien, Madge Hales and Collins' sister Mary Collins Powell, Madeline (Dilly) Dicker, Moya Llewelyn Davies and Lady Hazel Lavery are woven into this fascinating narrative of Collins' life.
Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied for Ireland is the first book to concentrate on the crucial role played by women in Collins's personal and working life. From his boyhood in an overwhelmingly female household in West Cork, women brought out the best in him and he brought out the best in them. Susan Killeen, his first girlfriend, remained a steadfast ally throughout his life. From 1917, his girlfriend, Madeline (Dilly) Dicker, helped to ease the burden of his huge workload as well as acting as a secret agent. Society ladies Moya Llewelyn Davies and Lady Hazel Lavery were conduits between Collins and the British Establishment and active participants in his work of espionage. In the final years of his life the true romantic passion between him and Kitty Kiernan is testified to by their frequent correspondence.These women, and many others who participated in the national struggle, women such as Kathleen Clarke, Leslie Price, Peg Barrett, Nancy O'Brien, Madge Hales and Collins' sister Mary Collins Powell, are woven into this fascinating narrative of Collins' life.
'It was the most providential escape yet. It will probably have the effect of making them think that I am even more mysterious than they believe me to be, and that is saying a good deal.' Michael Collins knew the power of his persona, and capitalised on what people wanted to believe. The image we have of him comes filtered through a sensational lens, exaggerated out of all proportion. We see what we have come to expect: 'the man who won the war', the centre of a web of intelligence that 'brought the British Empire to its knees'. He comes to us as a mixture of truth and lies, propaganda and misunderstanding. The willingness to see him as the sum of the Irish revolution, and in turn reduce him to a caricature of his many parts, clouds our view of both the man and the revolution. Drawing on archives in Ireland, Britain and the United States, the authors question our traditional assumptions about Collins. Was he the man of his age, or was he just luckier, more brazen, more written about and more photographed than the rest? Despite the pictures of him in uniform during the last weeks of his life, Collins saw very little of the actual fight. He was chiefly an organiser and a strategist. Should we remember him as a master of the mundane rather than the romantic figure of the blockbuster film? The eight thematic, highly illustrated chapters scrutinise different aspects of Collins' life: origins, work, war, politics, celebrity, beliefs, death and afterlives. Approaching him through the eyes of contemporaries and historians, friends and enemies, this provocative book reveals new insights, challenging what we think we know about him and, in turn, what we think we know about the Irish revolution.
Non-fiction Biography / history Ireland - War of Independence/Civil War Description: "Sigerson's work, obviously written from the heart, is a valuable contribution to the literature on Michael Collins, and should be available in any self-respecting Irish library. " - TIM PAT COOGAN A startling new perspective on Ireland's most notorious "cold case": the fatal shooting in 1922 of Michael Collins, Commander-in-Chief of newly-independent Ireland. Sigerson's controversial reconstruction of the ambush may be shocking to some: yet demonstrably fits the eyewitness accounts. This is the first re-examination of Collins' mysterious death in decades; carrying on where John Feehan's landmark edition of 1991 left off. It offers the most complete overview of the evidence ever published.
Women have too often been written out of history. This is especially true in the fight for Irish independence. The women's struggle was three-fold, beginning with the suffragettes' fight to win the vote. Then came the push for fair pay and working conditions. Binding them together became part of the national struggle, first for home rule, then for the establishment of an Irish Republic. The Easter Rising of 1916 brought them together as soldiers of the Republic. Through the terrible years that followed, they became the conscience of Republicanism. Following independence, they were betrayed by the men they had served alongside. DeValera and the Catholic Church restricted their roles in society--they were to be wives and mothers without a voice. It was not until Ireland's entry into the European community and the self destruction of a corrupt Church that Irish women were acknowledged for what they had achieved.
In Dublin, the War of Irish Independence (1919-1921) was an intense and dirty battle between military intelligence agents. While IRA flying columns fought the British Army and the Black and Tans in the countryside, the fighting in Ireland's capital city pitted the wits of IRA commander Michael Collins against the cloak-and-dagger innovations of British Intelligence chief Colonel Ormonde de l'Epee Winter. Drawing on detailed witness statements of Irish participants and documents and biographies from the British side, this history chronicles the covert war of assassinations, arrests, torture and murder that climaxed in the Bloody Sunday mass assassination of British intelligence officers by IRA squads in November 1920.
Historian and IRA leader Florence O'Donoghue describes his experiences as head of intelligence in Cork city during the Irish War of Independence (1919-1921). He candidly assesses the leaders of this period, including Tomas MacCurtain, Sean O'Hegarty, Terence MacSwiney and Michael Collins and critically examines the evolution of the Irish Volunteer citizen-soldiers. He also details his wife Josephine's role as the top IRA spy in Cork's British Army headquarters, working for the rebels in exchange for the return of her eldest son, lost in a bitter custody battle with her in-laws. After O'Donoghue kidnapped the child and reunited him with his mother, the two collaborators eventually fell in love and were secretly married in the spring of 1921. Forty years later, the couple presented their story to their children in order to explain the family secret that had haunted their domestic lives. The first part of the book is O'Donoghue's and his wife's account of their activities in the Anglo-Irish War, written in 1961; the second part is composed of 47 letters in diary form, written by O'Donoghue to his wife while he was 'on the run' during the last ten weeks of the Anglo-Irish War, from May to July 1921. They provide a rare snapshot of the daily life of fugitive IRA guerrillas.
This book is an attempt to address the widespread criticism of 'conspiracy theories', raising issues like: the control and negligence of the main organs of the media and police which make it difficult for true information to reach the public (and hence the public remain in ignorance of - and dismiss as a 'conspiracy theory' - the true facts); and the public's habit of underestimating the complexity of modern day politics. A number of complex political plots and allegations are described in detail including: the 1641 Rebellion, British Intelligence manipulation of the 1919-21 Irish leaders, Secret Societies and the role of Occult organisations in Ireland and around the world, the allegations that Martin McGuinness is a British agent, and the motivation behind large scale immigration into Ireland. The author also addresses the question of value systems in modern Western societies and asks are even these being manipulated in order to assist the process of political control.
This captivating book delves into the secretive world of the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) and its profound impact on Ireland’s political landscape between 1914 and 1924. With the aid of new documentation, Ranelagh unravels the true influence of the oath-bound society without which the 1916 Rising might never have taken shape. For Michael Collins, the IRB was the true custodian of the Irish Republic, and the only body he pledged his loyalty to, but its legacy remains obscured by its intense secrecy. This book re-introduces the IRB as the organisation that created and furnished the IRA, influenced the result of the critical 1918 election, and changed the face of Irish history. From Éamon de Valera’s recollections of how he first learned of the Treaty to narratives from Nora Connolly O’Brien, Emmett Dalton et al, testimonies from key figures paint a vivid picture of the IRB’s inner workings and external influence. A fascinating exploration of secret societies, political manoeuvres, and personal sacrifices, The Irish Republican Brotherhood 1914–1924 casts new light on a pivotal chapter in Ireland’s quest for independence.
Ireland, 1919: When Sinn Féin proclaims Dáil Éireann the parliament of the independent Irish republic, London declares the new assembly to be illegal, and a vicious guerrilla war breaks out between republican and crown forces. Michael Collins, intelligence chief of the Irish Republican Army, creates an elite squad whose role is to assassinate British agents and undercover police. The so-called 'Twelve Apostles' will create violent mayhem, culminating in the events of 'Bloody Sunday' in November 1920. Bestselling historian Tim Pat Coogan not only tells the story of Collins' squad, he also examines the remarkable intelligence network of which it formed a part, and which helped to bring the British government to the negotiating table.
