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Værker af Thomas M. Coffey

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Not half bad, given its limitations. First, this is history by a journalist – author Thomas Coffey was a newspaper and screen writer. Thus it has both the flaws and merits of journalism; the emphasis is on personal stories and anecdotes rather than background and analysis, but the personal stories and anecdotes are well-told and compelling. Second, although the subtitle is “The 1916 Irish Uprising” the book only covers the occupation and subsequent defense of the General Post Office, with only peripheral mention of other activity in Dublin and the rest of Ireland, and no coverage of the British point of view – the other side is just anonymous shapes in khaki shooting or being shot. Nor is there any discussion of what happened afterward; how outrage at how the rebels had reduced a large part of central Dublin to smoking ruins and contributed to numerous civilian deaths somehow metamorphosed into admiration for them and their elevation to the pantheon of mythic Irish heroes.


You probably couldn’t have picked a group of revolutionaries more out of touch with reality if you tried. The people who signed the independence proclamation were a tobacconist (Thomas Clarke), a newspaper editor (John MacDermott), poet (Thomas MacDonagh), another poet (Patrick Pearse), accountant (Eamonn Ceannt), socialist activist (John Connolly), and still another poet (Joseph Plunkett). None had any military experience. MacDermott was crippled by polio and could only walk with difficulty; Plunkett was dying of tuberculosis and would not have lasted long even if he hadn’t been executed after he surrendered. Doctrinaire Marxist Connolly was convinced that the capitalists would never damage their own property and thus they would be safe in the General Post Office; he was astonished when artillery opened up on the building. (Connolly also advised his followers to keep their weapons after independence, since he anticipated another war between Irish workers and Irish capitalists after the British were kicked out). All were amazed when the population of Dublin failed to rise, inspired by their example; when they were being marched away as prisoners while angry Dubliners pelted them with obscenities, rotten fruit and rocks, someone asked Jim Ryan if he thought the British would let them go; Ryan, looking at the hostile mob, replied “Bejesus, I hope not”.


Certainly worth reading for the stories, but you’ll need several more works on Irish history to pick up enough background to understand what was going on and why. Published for the 50th anniversary and therefore dated, but it’s unlikely much new information has come to light in the interim. Decent endpaper maps of Dublin and the immediate vicinity of the GPO, but it could use some tactical maps showing how things changed during the battle; it’s hard to keep track of how groups outside the GPO proper moved around, since street names in Dublin often change every block.
… (mere)
 
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setnahkt | 2 andre anmeldelser | Dec 2, 2017 |
Oh what a book! What a sad, gory, glory and a shambles of conflicting orders, inadequate planning but glorious, poetic and stirring leadership. Yes, there was agony in the deaths, but many were of that ‘glorious’ kind rather than the twenty or so, cold-blooded executions of the defeated Irish Republican Army leaders - James Connolly, the poet Joseph Plunkett already dying of TB and the celebrated "the O'Rahilly" who spent the previous day following his orders and decrying the uprising and ordering the more organized Volunteers to stand down, laughing, and then joining the encircled, already doomed Post Office revolution and becoming the only leader to fall in the street and thereby escaping the firing squad.

On the same day that thousands were slaughtered by the efficiencies of Boche and incompetence of Foche in Somme the Irish rebels forgot to meet the secret,and massive arms shipment from Germany and the Boche scuttled both ship and weapons into the harbor. As Connolly who had written of the Irish people -“the working class remain as the only incorruptible inheritors of the fight for Irish Freedom”- shuddered as he watched those same ‘incorruptibles’ loot and pillage the shattered ruins around the O’Connell Street post office building. Efforts to stop them were rejected raucously and pungently:
“Bloody Sinn Feiners, yer a disgrace to yer ouwn people” and “The (British) soldiers will bate yer heads in when they get here.”

Some 2,000 were marched away to prison, thousands killed, twenty or more hung or shot and yet the crowds pelted them with rotten fruit and bricks as they surrendered after five bloody days of fighting for Irish independence. ”Do yew tink they’ll let us go?" hopefully pleaded a prisoner of his section leader, Jim Ryan. Ryan, surveying the screaming mob of his own people retorted ”Bejasus, I hope not!

And yet… beginning and ending on a note of almost comic confusion … it did lead to that independence in the end, this shambles of the 1916 Easter Uprising.

Of Coffey’s fascinating book and marvelous research Benedict Kieley of the New York Times wrote ”While he sticks to the facts … his account still reads like a great novel”

So it does now.
… (mere)
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Markeret
John_Vaughan | 2 andre anmeldelser | May 11, 2012 |
This is a very fine book about the Easter Rising. Coffey has used scads of sources, including interviews of, and writings by, many of the participants, and gives us an hour-by-hour, day-by-day account of the Rising, primarily about the events that were happening at the General Post Office. More than that, we get excellent descriptions of the backgrounds and personalities of the leaders who signed the Proclamation of the Republic, of the disputes within and among the various revolutionary organizations, and about what was happening to the people who lived and worked in the areas where the Rising was occurring. Highly recommended, no matter your previous level of knowledge of this event.… (mere)
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Markeret
lilithcat | 2 andre anmeldelser | Apr 21, 2012 |

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