On Easter Monday, April 24, 1916, at the General Post Office (GPO) in Dublin, the leaders of the Rising proclaimed a free Irish Republic ... the Proclamation was read out by Patrick Pearse on the steps of the GPO just after noon; it declared the rights of the people of Ireland to be sovereign and looked forward to the establishment of a native Government elected on the democratic principles of self-setermination and government by consent.

The Proclamation of the Irish Republic is the most significant document in Irish history. The credo contained therein, to cherish ‘all of the children of the nation equally’, has come to define its seven signatories, marking a common bond in their life’s work. Their memory intensely moulded by their political activities, history can forget the diverse background from which these seven men came—family histories that touched upon twenty counties and economic environments ranging from extreme poverty to privilege. The Family Histories of the Seven Signatories is an indepensible genealogical history that uncovers the disparate lives that came together through the will for Irish independence. Thomas Clarke and James Connolly were born in England and Scotland respectively, their families having emigrated in the years after the Great Famine, an experience shared by many generations of Irish people before and since. Thomas McDonagh and Patrick Pearse had immediate English forebears. The signatories’ pasts from before they were born were an essential component in determining their ideas – each firmly their own – of an Irish republic. Their extended histories, fully disclosed within the pages of this book, are a riveting realisation of the complexities that defined nineteenth century Ireland and the lives of the seven signatories whose pasts reveal the many-faceted draw towards rebellion.

On Easter Sunday, 23 April 1916, the seven members of the Irish Republican Brotherhood’s military council met to proclaim an Irish Republic with themselves as the provisional government. After a week of fighting with the British army on the streets of Dublin, the Seven were arrested, court-martialled and executed. Cutting through the layers of veneration that have seen them regarded unquestioningly as heroes and martyrs by many, Ruth Dudley Edwards provides shrewd yet sensitive portraits of Ireland’s founding fathers. She explores how an incongruous group, which included a communist, visionary Catholic poets and a tobacconist, joined together to initiate an armed rebellion that changed the course of Irish history. Brilliant, thought-provoking and captivatingly told, The Seven challenges us to see past the myths and consider the true character and legacy of the Easter Rising.

Éamonn Ceannt was executed at Kilmainham Gaol on 8 May 1916, along with Con Colbert, Seán Heuston and Michael Mallin, for their part in the Easter Rising. Ceannt was one of the seven signatories of the Proclamation of the Irish Republic read by Patrick Pearse outside the GPO on that Easter Monday. He had led the rebel occupation of the South Dublin Union, and despite having been vastly outnumbered his volunteers were not overpowered but ordered to surrender by Pearse. Éamonn Ceannt, together with Patrick Pearse and Joseph Plunkett, was instrumental in planning the rebellion. He had joined the Gaelic League in 1899, where he met Pearse and Eoin MacNeill. He became a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1912 and became a founding member of the Irish Volunteeers the following year. This is the only biography of this brilliant military tactician and key player in the story of 1916.

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.

This book contains excerpts from The Workers' Republic Newspaper, in which Connolly published articles on guerrilla warfare and continuously attacked the group known as The Irish Volunteers for their inactivity.

You may know all about the Easter Rising and the Good Friday Agreement, but did you know that the hypodermic needle was invented in Tallaght? Or that Dublin was the first city in the world to have a woman stockbroker, decades before London or New York? Or that the formula used to create the video game Tomb Raider was sketched on a bridge in Cabra in the nineteenth century? With one entry for every day of the year, this book marks the anniversaries of momentous events in Irish history: in politics, medicine, music, sport and innovation. In this accessible, comprehensive and authoritative book, discover the moments that have helped to shape the national identity of Ireland.