Michael Collins: A Biography

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Some history books make an effort at appearing unbiased, though I have come across very few that actually succeed at doing so. In Cork city, Collins met with neutral IRA members Seán O'Hegarty and Florence O'Donoghue with a view to contacting Anti-Treaty IRA leaders Tom Barry and Tom Hales to propose a truce.

The quality of the stylish, spiky prose is also noteworthy, though it does occasionally become overwrought and indulgent. Collins was a “formidable” politician, constantly calculating but not a team player and prone to melodrama. He has won The Last Marathon in the Antarctic and set a record time in winning both The Himalayan 100 Mile Stage Race and The Everest Challenge Marathon. At the time of the ceasefire in July 1921 a major operation was allegedly in planning to execute every British secret service agent in Dublin, while a major ambush involving eighty officers and men was also planned for Templeglantine, County Limerick. Six days after the Pact elections, Sir Henry Wilson was assassinated by Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan—two London-based IRA volunteers, who had served in World War I, in which O'Sullivan had lost a leg—outside Wilson's home at 36 Eaton Place at approximately 2:20 pm.It did not establish the fully independent republic that Collins himself had shortly before demanded as a non-negotiable condition. Local guerrilla units received supplies, training and had largely a free hand to develop the war in their own region.

During the War of Independence he was Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and a government minister of the self-declared Irish Republic. Mackay's story of Pinkerton (1819-1884), founder of the famous Pinkerton Detective Agency is much more than a biography. Northern Ireland, which had a majority unionist population, could opt out of the Free State, a year after the signing of the Treaty. Tim Pat Coogan, former editor of the Irish Press, is well known on both sides of the Atlantic for his journalism and especially for his books, which include Wherever Green is Worn , The Troubles , Michael Collins and De Valera . To some northern Republicans Collins had formally recognized partition and had done so without consulting them.Much of the work he was involved in after the 1916 Rising with the Irish National Aid and Volunteer Dependants’ Fund was mundane – “for the most part he wrote letters, day after day, week after week” – and he was always frustrated with those who were, in his own words “excellent in theory bur rather weak in practical details”. In doing so, he joined the group that was transferred to Frongoch internment camp in Wales, a movement that historian Tim Pat Coogan describes as "one of the luckiest escapes of his life". He was derivative in his meanderings on the idea of an Irish “nation” and aped the sentimental mush about the western seaboard beloved of his generation despite all the guff pedalled about Collins as the great “moderniser”. There were also regional organisers, such as Ernie O'Malley and Liam Mellows, who reported directly to Collins at St Ita's secret basement GHQ in central Dublin.

To be so installed he had to formally meet the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland Viscount FitzAlan the head of the British administration in Ireland.The final sentences confirmed my suspicion that the strength of Coogan’s Collins in the final part of this book appears greater when compared against the failings of De Valera and that left an unnerving impression on me since Collins by all accounts was a larger than life figure all on his own.

The negotiators had agreed at the cabinet meeting in Dublin that they would not sign the Treaty without bringing it back for the Dáil cabinet to ratify.

On second reading the closing paragraph even serves as a powerful reminder to me of how personal grudges more often than not determine the course of history whether we like it or not. He named a local blacksmith, James Santry, and his headmaster at Lisavaird National School, Denis Lyons, as the first nationalists to personally inspire his "pride of Irishness". After the death of Collins, his concern for the plight of northern Catholics was made clear by the Belfast IRA commander Seamus Woods "Of all the Dublin government ministers, Collins had been most deeply concerned about the fate of northern Catholics.