Just Finished Reading: 1916 – The Mornings After: From the Courts Martial to the Tribunals by Tim Pat Coogan (FP: 2015) [311pp] 

This is not the book I was looking for. I had assumed (wrongly it turned out) that this was about the immediate aftermath of the 1916 Easter Rising in Dublin. It actually turned out to be MUCH broader than that. Essentially the book was in three parts. 

The first (roughly) third did indeed look at the Rising itself although it only got a handful of pages dedicated directly to it. Even so, I picked up a few more details I was previously unaware of. The rest of that section looked at the trials, executions and reception of the survivors. Quite quickly afterwards there was some discussion of the demands for Independence (post Great War) and Britains reluctance to grant such followed by the ‘compromise’ of essentially Dominion status within the Empire – the Irish Free State. Micael Collins (as well as others) saw this as ‘the freedom to work towards freedom’ but other hardliners saw it otherwise – as capitulation or defeat. Tensions between the pro and anti-treaty groups deepened and, no long after, they started fighting leading to the Irish Civil War and (finally) Independence and partition of the north (Ulster). Overall, it was a quick but reasonably detailed look at the period. 

The second section jumped forward to the 1960’s and the Troubles looking at things from both the perspective of the North and South. As the author (a journalist at the time) reported on and often knew the people involved this had both an interesting personal view of the period as well as a level of knowledgeable detail often missing from more professionally historical accounts. Again, I’m reasonably aware of the events covered – partially by reading about them in other works and partially from watching the events on the nightly news – but the authors insights and access gave them an extra valuable impact. 

The final section I found least interesting. Here the author turned much more polemical as he looked at the failures of Irish governance, the scandals inside the Catholic church and the financial failures that led to the Irish banking crisis post-2008. Again, as a journalist, the author both reported on and often interviewed the people involved so had a very good grasp of the events. I did, however, think that for a general (non-Irish) readership he went far too much into the weeds of things and more that once I found myself lost in the detail. A few times I honestly skim read bits just to get the gist of things. 

So, although this was somewhat disappointing for all of the reasons above I still picked up a few extra nuggets of knowledge and will be back to look at 1916 again – hopefully this time with the book and the focus I do want. Reasonable.