The 1916 Easter Rising and its aftermath changed Ireland for ever. The British government’s execution of fourteen of its instigators and participants transformed a group hitherto perceived as cranks and troublemakers into national heroes. Those who avoided the British firing squads of May 1916 went on to plan a new – and ultimately successful – struggle for Ireland’s independence, shaping their country’s destiny for the century to come.
But what sort of country did they create? And to what extent does post-1916 Ireland measure up to the hopes and aspirations of ‘MacDonagh and MacBride / And Connolly and Pearse’?
Best-selling historian Tim Pat Coogan offers a strongly personal perspective on the Irish century that followed the Rising. In 1916: The Mornings After he charts a flawed history, marked as much by complacency, corruption and institutional and clerical abuse as it is by the sacrifices, the nation-building achievements and the idealism of the Republic’s founding fathers.
1916: The Mornings After is available here.