The Laurel and the Ivy : The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism

by Robert Kee

News of the sudden death a hundred years ago of the 45-year-old Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell shocked and amazed the public in Europe and the United States. Today he is little more than a name, associated with a sexual scandal which has been used as material for films and plays but largely ignored for its true that it altered the course of British and Irish history.In ten years this half-American, half-Irish County Wicklow landlord with an English accent gave Irish nationalism its most effective political shape for centuries. In the 1880s his presence dominated British domestic politics. No prime minister could rule without taking into account how he might exercise his power next. Had he lived, the future of British-Irish relations could only have been different.Robert Kee, in his first major book on Ireland since The Green Flag and his television series for the BBC, A Television History, here traces Parnell's early years in politics and his emergence in the context of the faltering state of Irish nationalism at that time. He stresses how ideally suited Parnell's personality was to bring it to life again. Ironically, it was the most personal feature of all in his life that brought the nationalist cause, for which he had done so much, to sudden halt. But its eventual partial triumph many years later was to be based on political foundations that Parnell had helped to establish.

Genres: History, Biography, Ireland, Politics

Paperback

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Robert Kee, CBE was a broadcaster, journalist and writer, known for his historical works on World War II and Ireland.

He was educated at Stowe School, Buckingham, and read history at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a pupil, then a friend, of the historian A.J.P. Taylor.

During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force as a bomber pilot. His Hampden was shot down by flak one night while on a mine-laying operation off the coast of German-occupied Holland. He was imprisoned and spent three years in a German POW camp. This gave him material for his first book A Crowd Is Not Company. It was first published as a novel in 1947 but was later revealed to be an autobiography. It recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war and his various escapes from the Nazi camp. The Times describes it as "arguably the best POW book ever written."

His career in journalism began immediately after the Second World War. He worked for the Picture Post, then later became a special correspondent for The Sunday Times and The Observer. He was also literary editor of The Spectator.

In 1958 he moved to television. He appeared for many years on both the BBC and ITV as reporter, interviewer and presenter. He presented many current affairs programmes including Panorama, ITN's First Report and Channel 4's Seven Days. He was awarded the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 1976.

Kee wrote and presented the documentary series Ireland – A Television History in 1980. The work was widely shown in the United Kingdom and the United States and received great critical acclaim, winning the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. Following its transmission on RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster, Kee won a Jacob's Award for his script and presentation.

Reviews

[Tony Smyth · Rating 4 out of 5]

After a slow start I thought it was fascinating, but as I'm Irish and this is a period of Irish history I didnt know that much about, I may be little biased. As right now is the 100th anniversry of the Easter Rising against the British colonisers, the Parnell story is important as background to that event. If nothing else Parnell was masterful as a politician, especially in period when most of the British ruling class viewed the Irish as almost subhuman.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

"And though reliability, as everyone who had anything to do with him [Willie O'Shea], including Chamberlain, had discovered, was not always the most attractive side of an otherwise reasonably attractive personality, there is a good chance that he was speaking the truth on this point" (p 519 in the 1993 hardback edition).
I was totally perplexed by this sentence because surely most people would view reliabilty as a good trait in someone they have dealings with. I had to re-read this line several times to try and make sense of it until I came to the conclusion that it simply doesn't and that there is probably an 'un-' missing from 'reliability. This can be a bit symptomatic of this book. It is without doubt an excellent work of history and biography and draws deeply and extensively on the available evidence (private and public letters, newspaper reports, autobiographies and other biographies written years afterwards) and if you wish to dive into and luxuriate in the sometimes bewildering minutiae of the politics of Charles Stewart Parnell's life and times, then you will not be disappointed by this work.
However, as the quote above indicates, it is sometimes very densely written (maybe thirty years ago that was the norm) and it is not a light read! There were several occasions when reading this that I had to stop and re-read a sentence or even paragraph in order to satisfy myself that I had actually understood where it was going. (Maybe the age of super-short sound bites and the lack of attention to any one thing we now experience as a result of the bombardment of pictures, text and sound in social media are at fault here!). I personally thoroughly enjoyed reading this biography as a lot of the outline and some of the details I was taught in school when we studied my history exam syllabus was familiar to me and it was a pleasure to be reminded of them (a sort of walk down memory lane!). In fact it was good to read some of the contradictions of an otherwise accepted wisdom about Parnell's life and the fight for Irish Home Rule - this book was published some twenty years after my school years, and could well have included material not know before. Kee is particularly good at coming clean and saying that he can't actually make up his mind about what might have been going on, rather than just plumping for one explanation regardless. This is particularly true of the triangular relationship between Parnell, Katie O'Shea and Willie O'Shea. Kee indicates that it may not have been a simple fact of Willie accepting and indeed almost conniving at the deep relationship between the other two, that is accepting Parnell was having an affair with his wife, probably for reasons of self-advancement in the political world. Kee leaves it up to the reader to judge for themselves; at least that is the conclusion I came away with. I still don't know if O'Shea was naive and simply deceived or whether he knew all along and accepted it. Maybe a mix of both , if that is possible: he knew but chose to ignore.
At the end my feeling that many British and Irish politicians but most importantly characters such as Gladstone and those Irish Catholic hierarchy exhibited utter hypocrisy during and after Parnell's involvement in the O'Shea divorce case was doubly reinforced. A lot of them knew or were more or less aware that a relationship had been going on between Parnell and Katie O'Shea but chose not to know until it hit the public sphere during the famous divorce case.
Parnell himself comes across as maybe an unusual character, not always the easiest to deal with but certainly, because of the fervour with which he pursued the cause of Irish Home Rule and improvement of the economic position of the Irish tenant farmers, one who inspired a fervently loyal following in Ireland. This is well demonstrated in this impressive work by Kee. If you want a deeper understanding of a story which you may know only in part or superficially, this will not disappoint. But be prepared to concentrate!

[Craig McGraw · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very detailed biography of one of Ireland’s independence heroes. My complaint about the book is that the writing is very dry and overly detailed. The book does honor Charles S. Parnell

[Joey, The Dragon Reread · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very interesting, even-handed account of an enigmatic figure in Irish history. He did his best to offer up the known facts surrounding Parnell's mythic rise to political fame and his sharp slide into political disarray while presenting multiple sides of the subjective narrative to allow the reader to draw appropriate conclusions. At times, the book ran a bit long-winded. However, the overall level of detail was refreshing and opened up an era of Irish history to me. My knowledge was previously limited to vague references to people "slandering the great Parnell" and "Kitty O'Shea" without any real context. I would quickly recommend this book to anyone who wanted to learn more about the man: Charles Stewart Parnell.

His quaint-perched aerie on the crags of Time
Where the rude din of this century
Can trouble him no more.
-James Joyce