Search: 5 results found for "tag:"Author Derek Kelly""

Book Synopsis`Well, I’ve helped to wind up the clock – I might as well hear it strike.’ Michael Joseph O’Rahilly. The Easter Rising of 1916 was a seminal moment in Ireland’s turbulent history. For the combatants it was a no-holds-barred clash: the professional army of an empire against a highly motivated, well-drilled force of volunteers. What did the men and women who fought on the streets of Dublin endure during those brutal days after the clock struck on 24 April 1916? For them, the conflict was a mix of bloody fighting and energy-sapping waiting, with meagre supplies of food and water, little chance to rest and the terror of imminent attacks. The experiences recounted here include those of: 20-year-old Sean McLoughlin who went from Volunteer to Captain to Commandant-General in five days: his cool head under fire saved many of his comrades; Volunteer Robert Holland, a sharpshooter who continued to fire despite punishing rifle recoil; Volunteer Thomas Young’s mother, who acted as a scout, leading a section through enemy-infested streets; the 2/7th Sherwood Foresters NCO who died when the grenade he threw at Clanwilliam House bounced off the wall and exploded next to his head; 2nd Lieutenant Guy Vickery Pinfield of the 8th Royal Hussars, who led the charge on the main gate of Dublin Castle and became the first British officer to die in the Rising. This account of the major engagements of Easter Week 1916 takes us onto the shelled and bullet-ridden streets of Dublin with the foot soldiers on both sides of the conflict, into the collapsing buildings and through the gunsmoke.Trade Review'Reads like a gripping novel and is one of the standout recent books on the Rising.' * The Irish Times *'Outstanding book.' * Irish American News *'Fast paced, graphic retelling of events that will appeal to a new generation.' * An Cosantoir *'A fantastic book.' * The Last Word, Today FM *

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Gill Those of Us Who Must Die: Execution, Exile and

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Book SynopsisThe 1916 Rising is one of the most documented and analysed episodes in Ireland's turbulent history. Often overlooked, however, is its immediate aftermath. This significant window in the narrative of Irish revolutionary history, which saw the rebirth of the Volunteers and laid the foundations for the War of Independence, is usually covered as a footnote, or from the biographical standpoints of the leaders.Picking up where the authors' acclaimed account of the Rising, When the Clock Struck in 1916, left off, we join the men and women of the Rising in the dark abyss of defeat. The leaders' poignant final hours and violent ends are laid bare, but the perspective of those with the unpalatable task of carrying out the executions is also revealed, rectifying a historic disservice to those who reluctantly formed the firing squads. While the prisoners in Dublin awaited their grisly fates, others were deported in stinking cattle boats to camps in England and Wales. When they returned, it was to a jubilant welcome in a radically changed country. The gruesome death of Thomas Ashe in September 1917, after being force-fed in Mountjoy Prison, became a marshalling point for the republican movement, as his funeral saw Volunteers once again assembled in uniform on Dublin's streets. The next phase of the struggle was born, under new leaders who had 'graduated' from the internment camps known as 'Republican Universities', ready and eager to fill the void left by the executed visionaries.The authors sifted through thousands of first-hand accounts of the suffering endured when ordinary people set out to change history. Their stirring account will transport readers into life as it looked, sounded and even smelt to those taking part in this crucial juncture of our history.

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