An evaluation of the contribution made by Michael Collins to the making of the Irish state. A series of specially commissioned essays, written by some of Ireland's leading historians (academic and popular), on the contribution made by Michael Collins to the making of the Irish state. This is a professional evaluation of Michael Collins which brings to light his multi-faceted and complex character. The contributors examine Collins as Minister for Finance, his role in intelligence, his policy towards the north, his career as Commander-in-Chief, the origins of the Civil War, his relationship w.

How the British Secret Service failed to neutralize Sinn Fein and the IRA

Michael Collins and the Making of a New Ireland, which was first published in 1926 as two volumes, was written by Piaras Beaslai, a Major-General in the Sinn Fein army who was an intimate friend of Michael Collins and his senior in the inner councils of the most extreme section of the party. Michael Collins (1890-1922) was an Irish revolutionary, soldier and politician who was a leading figure in the early-20th-century Irish struggle for independence. He was Chairman of the Provisional Government of the Irish Free State from January 1922 until his assassination in August 1922. Collins’ family had republican connections reaching back to the 1798 rebellion. He moved to London in 1906 and became a member of the London GAA, through which he became associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Gaelic League. He returned to Ireland in 1916 and fought in the Easter Rising. He was subsequently imprisoned in the Frongoch internment camp as a prisoner of war, but was released in December 1916. After his release, Collins rose through the ranks of the Irish Volunteers and Sinn Féin. He became a Teachta Dála for South Cork in 1918, and was appointed Minister for Finance in the First Dáil. He was present when the Dáil convened on 21 Jan. 1919 and declared the independence of the Irish Republic. In the ensuing War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adj.-Gen. for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He gained fame as a guerrilla warfare strategist, planning and directing many successful attacks on British forces. After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins and Arthur Griffith were sent to London by Eamon de Valera to negotiate peace terms. A provisional government was formed under his chairmanship in early 1922 but was soon disrupted by the Irish Civil War, in which Collins was commander-in-chief of the National Army. He was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty forces on 22 Aug. 1922.

When the Irish nationalist Michael Collins signed the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921, he observed to Lord Birkenhead that he may have signed his own death warrant. In August 1922 that prophecy came true when Collins was ambushed, shot and killed by a compatriot, but his vision and legacy lived on. Tim Pat Coogan's biography presents the life of a man whose idealistic vigor and determination were matched by his political realism and organizational abilities. This is the classic biography of the man who created modern Ireland.

The story—both romantic and terrifying—of how a handful of men, armed with nothing more than handguns and guts, forced the greatest nation in the world from their shores. On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, the first great revolution of the twentieth century began as working-class men and women occupied buildings throughout Dublin, Ireland, including the general post office on O’Connell Street. Among the commoners in the GPO was a young staff captain of the Irish Volunteers named Michael Collins. He was joined a day later by a fourteen-year-old messenger boy, Eoin Kavanagh. Four days later they would all surrender, but they had struck the match that would burn Great Britain out of Ireland for the first time in seven hundred years. The 13th Apostle is the reimagined story of how Michael Collins, along with his young acolyte Eoin, transformed Ireland from a colony into a nation. Collins’s secret weapon was his intelligence system and his assassination squad, nicknamed “The Twelve Apostles.” On November 21, 1920, the squad—with its thirteenth member, young Eoin—assassinated the entire British Secret Service in Dublin. Twelve months and sixteen days later, Collins signed the Treaty at 10 Downing Street, which brought into being what is, today, the Republic of Ireland. An epic novel in the tradition of Thomas Flanagan’s The Year of the French and Leon Uris’s Trinity, The 13th Apostle is a story that will capture the imagination and hearts of freedom-loving readers everywhere. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade, Yucca, and Good Books imprints, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in fiction—novels, novellas, political and medical thrillers, comedy, satire, historical fiction, romance, erotic and love stories, mystery, classic literature, folklore and mythology, literary classics including Shakespeare, Dumas, Wilde, Cather, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.