On Easter Monday 1916, a disciplined group of Irish Volunteers seized the city's General Post Office in what would become the defining act of rebellion against British rule. This book unravels the events in and around the GPO during the Easter Rising of 1916, revealing the twists and turns that the myth of the GPO has undergone in the last century.

We know from our literary histories that there was a movement called the Irish Literary Renaissance, and that Yeats was at its head. We know from our political histories that there is now a Republic of Ireland because of a nationalistic movement that, militarily, began with the insurrection of Easter Week, 1916. But what do these two movements have to do with one another?... Because I came to history with literary eyes, I could not help seeing history in terms and shapes of imaginative experience. Thus Movement, Myth, and Image came to be the way in which the nature of the insurrection appeared to me. This method of analyzing historical event as if it were a work of art is not altogether as inappropriate as it might seem when the historical event happens to be a revolution. The Irish revolutionaries lived as if they were in a work of art, and this inability to tell the difference between sober reality and the realm of imagination is perhaps one very important characteristic of a revolutionary. The tragedy of actuality comes from the fact that when, in a revolution, history is made momentarily into a work of art, human beings become the material that must be ordered, molded, or twisted into shape. (from the preface)

Children of the Rising is the first ever account of the young lives violently lost during the week of the 1916 Rising: long-forgotten and never commemorated, until now. Boys, girls, rich, poor, Catholic, Protestant - no child was guaranteed immunity from the bullet and bomb that week, in a place where teeming tenement life existed side by side with immense wealth. Drawing on extensive original research, along with interviews with relatives, Joe Duffy creates a compelling picture of these forty lives, along with one of the cut and thrust of city life between the two canals a century ago. This gripping story of Dublin and its people in 1916 will add immeasurably to our understanding of the Easter Rising. Above all, it honours the forgotten lives, largely buried in unmarked graves, of those young people who once called Dublin their home.

In the long and epic fight for Irish independence, few events match the drama and tragedy of the Easter Rising of 1916. Inspired by the legends of old and sharing the dream of an independent Ireland, an extraordinary alliance of men and women sought to overthrow British rule in Ireland. 'Easter Dawn' charts the story of the Rising from the landing of the guns at Howth in 1914, to the arrests and executions that followed it. The fate of those involved - rebel and loyalist alike - is told through eyewitness accounts and media reports. Intricately researched and emotively written, the narrative is woven around contemporary photographs, many rare and unseen, providing a fresh look at the people and places involved. As the centenary of 1916 approaches, this book is ideally suited for anyone seeking an accessible, impartial and dramatic view of that immense week.

Townshend traces the dramatic events of the Easter Rebellion in Dublin in 1916, the actions and aims of the rebels, the British response to the revolt and the consequences, politically and culturally, of the uprising.

Little has been written on Trinity College's role in Easter Week 1916 as a 'loyal nucleus' dividing the insurgents and providing an effective counterweight to rebel headquarters in the GPO. The College is usually mentioned in the context of the rebels' alleged failure to attempt its capture, and its co-option as a barracks in the later stages of the rebellion. Most commentators march past Trinity as determinedly as did the Irish Citizen Army on its way to St Stephen's Green, with at most a sideways glance at what one rebel referred to as the intellectual centre of West Britonism. Still more neglected are the men who helped to save Trinity from potential disaster at a time when it was virtually defenceless. This book reveals how five New Zealanders, acting as the core of a small squad of colonial troops, provided a vital shield to protect Trinity from capture. Had the College fallen to the surprise attack launched on it by the rebels at midnight on Easter Monday, its 324th year may well have been its last; nothing less than heavy and prolonged artillery fire would have sufficed to defeat the occupiers. Letters written home by the New Zealanders give fresh insight into important aspects of the insurrection and allow us to test some controversial claims against both Trinity's own record and the various rebel accounts. More importantly, they help to answer questions left unasked in previous studies: how close did Trinity come to being a central battleground in the Rising? How and why did it escape this grisly fate? And--not least--what might have happened but for the timely intervention of the colonial troops? Defending Trinity College Dublin, Easter 1916 puts this neglected episode into an imperial context, with Dublin as a theatre of battle in a global war.

At age fifteen, Ned Halloran lost both of his parents--and almost his own life--when the Titanic sank. Determined to keep what little he has, he returns to his homeland of Ireland and enrolls at Saint Edna's school in Dublin. Saint Edna's headmaster is the renowned scholar and poet, Patrick Pearse--who is soon to gain greater fame as a rebel and patriot. Ned becomes deeply involved with the growing revolution . . . and the sacrifices it will demand. Through Ned's eyes, Morgan Llywelyn's 1916 examines the Irish fight for freedom--inspired by poets and schoolteachers, fueled by a desperate desire for independence, and played out in the historic streets of Dublin against the background of World War I. It is a story of the brave men and heroic women who, for a few unforgettable days, managed to hold out against the might of the British Empire. The Irish Century Novels 1916: A Novel of the Irish Rebellion 1921: The Great Novel of the Irish Civil War 1949: A Novel of the Irish Free State 1972: A Novel of Ireland's Unfinished Revolution 1999: A Novel of the Celtic Tiger and the Search for Peace