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4.17 AVERAGE
4.17 AVERAGE
The blurb on this is misleading—the "desperate plan to save the collapsing rebellion" was never put into action and occupies maybe ten pages of this otherwise engaging popular history. Gene Kerrigan pieces together a patchwork overview the events of the 1916 Rising in Dublin from the various personal testimonies of those who were there.
While some of the big names feature—Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly—Kerrigan focuses his account mostly on a relatively small group, the F Company of the Irish Volunteers. It's no surprise, given his background in journalism, that Kerrigan has a keen eye for the vibrant detail: the hungry fighter pausing to consider whether it was permissible to eat a ham sandwich on a Friday; the loose horses careening down O'Connell Street; the men careful to shave before their executions. These help to make very human a moment in Irish history which is often mythologised and twisted for political purposes. We're taught about plaster saints in school, not that one of the signers of the Proclamation had to be coerced to do so because he found the idea of equal rights for women repugnant (my money's on Pearse), or that several of the leaders sat around on the first day of the Rising wondering what they would do if they actually won, and whether or not they should ask a Prussian prince to become king of Ireland.
This isn't an academic history; there are no footnotes, a fact which would normally irk me a great deal. Kerrigan's incisive humanity and insistence on democratic coverage made The Scrap a compelling read for me regardless.
While some of the big names feature—Pádraig Pearse, James Connolly—Kerrigan focuses his account mostly on a relatively small group, the F Company of the Irish Volunteers. It's no surprise, given his background in journalism, that Kerrigan has a keen eye for the vibrant detail: the hungry fighter pausing to consider whether it was permissible to eat a ham sandwich on a Friday; the loose horses careening down O'Connell Street; the men careful to shave before their executions. These help to make very human a moment in Irish history which is often mythologised and twisted for political purposes. We're taught about plaster saints in school, not that one of the signers of the Proclamation had to be coerced to do so because he found the idea of equal rights for women repugnant (my money's on Pearse), or that several of the leaders sat around on the first day of the Rising wondering what they would do if they actually won, and whether or not they should ask a Prussian prince to become king of Ireland.
This isn't an academic history; there are no footnotes, a fact which would normally irk me a great deal. Kerrigan's incisive humanity and insistence on democratic coverage made The Scrap a compelling read for me regardless.