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The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923
Charles Townshend
A gripping narrative of the most critical years in modern Ireland's history - from Charles Townshend, author of Easter 1916
TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014
The protracted, terrible fight for independence pitted the Irish against the British and the Irish against other Irish. It was both a physical battle of shocking violence against a regime increasingly seen as alien and unacceptable and an intellectual battle for a new sort of country. The damage done, the betrayals and grim compromises put the new nation into a state of trauma for at least a generation, but at a nearly unacceptable cost the struggle ended: a new republic was born.
Charles Townshend's Easter 1916 opened up the astonishing events around the Rising for a new generation and in The Republic he deals, with the same unflinchingly wish to get to the truth behind the legend, with the most critical years in Ireland's history. There has been a great temptation to view these years through the prisms of martyrology and good-and-evil. The picture painted by Townshend is far more nuanced and sceptical - but also never loses sight of the ordinary forms of heroism performed by Irish men and women trapped in extraordinary times.
'The author has devoted his life to the study of Irish history and this huge work is the pinnacle of his labours' John Banville on Easter 1916
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About Charles Townshend
Reviews for The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923
Roy Foster
Irish Times
[A] tour de force ... wonderful ... brilliantly written history ... Townshend's book can only inspire admiration
John Lee
Irish Mail on Sunday
Highly detailed and rich ... [a] magisterial and judicious narrative ... this must surely be one of the definitive texts on this period of Anglo-Irish history
Mary Kenny
Literary Review
Charles Townshend's monumental work [is] bold in ambition, scope and execution ... a work of broad and confident understanding, characterised by a uniform care in its approach to complex and controversial material ... An intensely compelling and often discomfiting narrative, which candidly explores four years of personal and intimate violence
Tablet
Magisterial ... intensely gruelling but hugely impressive ... for people who prefer to know the facts ... [a] fine achievement of breathing new life into a subject that some historians might assume had already been done to death
Sunday Business Post
For those interested in a reliable and empathetic introduction to the topic, this is now the best place to start
BBC History Magazine
A great read ... it has certainly set a very high standard for others to measure up to
Marianne Elliott
Times Higher Education
A well-sourced, severely objective account of the origins and courses of the wars that followed the Easter Rising
Irish Catholic
Charles Townshend's The Republic . . . nails the Irish revolutionary events of 1918-23 with his inimitable kind of forensic panache
Roy Foster
Times Literary Supplement BOOKS OF THE YEAR