Seán MacDíarmada moved in the shadows, ultra-cautious about what he committed to paper, aware that his letters could be intercepted by the police. Because of this, history has not allocated MacDíarmada the prominent role he deserves in the organisation of the Easter Rising.
This book gives Seán MacDíarmada his proper place in history. It outlines his substantial role in the detailed planning of the Rising, which led to him signing the Proclamation of the Irish Republic: second only to Tom Clarke.
Brian Feeney, a political columnist with the Irish News, is a leading nationalist commentator and frequent broadcaster on Northern Ireland affairs. He was an SDLP councillor for sixteen years. He is co-author of
Lost Lives: the story of the men, women and children killed in the Northern Ireland troubles. In 2001 the book won the Christopher Ewart-Biggs award for its contribution to reconciliation in Ireland and Europe. A historian by profession, he is Head of History at St Mary's University College, Belfast.
In his well-researched book on the most enigmatic of the Rising’s leaders Brian Feeney addresses the difficulty of writing a biography of a figure who left little in the way a documentary trail … This short volume is a fine addition to the ever increasing literature on this period. MacDiarmada comes across as a committed and driven man, charming and sometimes funny yet single-minded and capable of manipulation. In the run-up to the centenaries the great dangers are to be on the one hand overly reverential or on the other overly critical. Feeney avoids these dangers
Dublin Review of Books
emerges from the ashes of the Rising and Frongach as the real leader in waiting of the nascent post-Rising revolutionary movement
Enniscorthy Echo
views will still be divided on the whole question of the Easter Rising and its unforeseen consequences, with which this island is still living. But these books go some way to filling out the facts behind the mythology that has so long surrounded the events of Easter Week
The Irish Catholic
