Maurice Walsh is a gifted writer with a novelist’s eye for the illuminating detail of everyday lives in extremis…The great strength of Walsh’s book is its breadth of vision. His book challenges parochial tendencies in the revolutionary story.
Maurice Walsh’s invigorating account of the revolution and its immediate aftermath starts after the Rising, and firmly locates the Irish crisis in the postwar Europe described by Thomas Masaryk as ‘a laboratory atop a vast graveyard’. Vivid and incisive, his approach highlights discontinuities and contradictions among the revolutionaries.
Maurice Walsh’s book is the most vivid and dramatic account of this epoch to date: if you want to feel the full horror of Bloody Sunday in Dublin and the ‘sacking’ of Balbriggan by the Black and Tans, this is the place to look.
The great strength of this compelling book is that it manages to make large and abstract arguments while conveying a sense of the lived experience of the Irish revolution. With one hand, Maurice Walsh widens his lens, while simultaneously he applies a magnifying glass with the other. The result of this dexterity is an arresting set of Big Pictures interspersed with a sequence of vivid miniatures. Indeed, the particular originality of the work lies in the striking conjunction of images.
03/01/2016
In this accessible history of the creation of the Irish Free State, documentary filmmaker Walsh (The News from Ireland) begins with the Easter Rising of 1916 and closes with the official cessation of hostilities in 1923. More than a simple recitation of events, this work provides a close examination of the period under consideration. The text is constructed in such a way that it is often difficult to tell whether Walsh is quoting a source, responding to the work of other scholars, or advancing new arguments based on the historical evidence. This lack of clarity could frustrate scholars who wish to mine this volume for its research value. Walsh supplies an excellent index, notes, and a select bibliography, which will be especially useful for further reading. VERDICT An entertaining and accurate introduction to a critical period in Irish history, Walsh's work will be of greatest interest to general readers. Academics wishing to survey texts relating to Irish studies should also take note.—Hanna Clutterbuck-Cook, Harvard Univ. Lib., Cambridge, MA
★ 2016-02-28
Walsh (Journalism/Kingston Coll.; The News from Ireland: Foreign Correspondents and the Irish Revolution, 2008) digs into the heart of the fight to establish an Irish Republic. In 1914, British Parliament passed the Home Rule Act, but it was suspended until after World War I, and during a period of 10 years, the English bought 12 million acres from large estates for purchase by the tenants. Home Rule was not enough for the "small but insuppressible island." Walsh provides an eye-opening look at one of many new countries emerging after the war and their similar struggles. The Easter Uprising of 1916 was the beginning, and it produced enough martyrs to build the small army of volunteers who picked up the cause. The election of 1918, with women voting for the first time, returned a majority for Sinn Féin, who didn't wait for permission to rule themselves and established a government in Dublin. This Dáil Éireann, the Irish parliament, took power from the British government, but Britain paid little attention until 1919, when it was outlawed, forcing it underground. Walsh's narrative is really about the toughness of the Irish people, the enormous role of the Catholic Church, the end of the landed gentry, and how the Irish Republican Army led what the author calls a flawed revolution. The Royal Irish Constabulary was the model for colonial police, and they were the symbol of British rule and the prime Irish Republican Army target for assassination. It was murderous and cruel on both sides, a conflict with vendetta the only rule. Anarchy was the order of the day as the IRA robbed banks, stole cars, and shot anyone in their way. They were not the only beasts in this game, however. Ultimately, writes the author, the "sense that the revolution was a failure because it did not create a new country was the bitterest feeling of all." An excellent history, but more importantly, a sharply written portrait of a people and their long struggle to survive.
