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Broken Archangel: The Tempestuous Lives of Roger Casement
The extraordinary new biography of one remarkable man who led a life ahead of his time.In 1904 Roger Casement became an overnight celebrity when he broadcast the abuses of the Belgian Congo and lobbied for change. Widely admired and even knighted for his humanitarian fervour, still he did not reveal all of himself. The internal fault lines ran he was neither fully Irish nor English; baptised Catholic but raised Protestant; party to colonial rule yet appalled by its cruelties; and desperate for intimacy while tormented by his homosexuality.Plagued by poor mental health, these competing stresses would eventually overwhelm Casement - and he enters Germany during the First World War with a rash scheme to incite the Easter Rising. Later captured and declared a traitor by the British, his reputation in ruins after details of his sex life are leaked, Casement's life ends on the gallows and his body in an unmarked grave until, decades later, he is honoured with an Irish state funeral.Activist, patriot, lover, traitor, Roger Casement has been many things, to many people. Throughout all these myriad lives, Casement remained someone who struggled with his identity in a world that wilfully condemned difference. Broken Archangel brings the real - passionate, self-deceiving, altruistic, insecure, determined - Roger Casement to life for the first time.
400 pages, Paperback
Published April 4, 2024
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208 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 30, 2024
Wonderful biography of this great man's life. Brilliant insight into the humanitarian's work in the Congo and Amazon. Casement is a somewhat neglected figure in Irish history, but this book brings him back to life. 👌👌
May 24, 2025
Interesting biography. In some places superfluous detail, it was easy to lose the big picture - for example how much was the uprising really expecting from the weapons? Was an Irish force recruited from PoWs really expected.
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June 24, 2024In 1937 W.B. Yeats wrote that: ‘The ghost of Roger Casement is beating on the door.’ Just under eight decades later, as the country marked the centenary of the Easter Rising in 2016, it seemed as though Ireland had finally welcomed Casement’s ghost inside and invited him to get comfortable. A year on from a referendum that saw Irish voters approve marriage equality by a landslide, and with a peace agreement in Northern Ireland still holding, the Irish public appeared ready to claim – and acclaim – Roger Casement and all his complexities and contradictions.
That summer I attended a panel discussion about Casement at the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Most of the audience’s questions suggested national pride in Casement as a suitable hero for a country buoyed by its newfound status as a progressive nation. But one audience member was at odds with the wider consensus: he accused the panel of slandering the dead patriot by accepting the authenticity of diaries in which Casement recorded his homosexual encounters. The ghost of Roger Casement, it seemed, was receiving questions from the floor.
A century on from his execution, Casement’s contradictions still incite passionate responses – and not only in the atypically febrile atmosphere of Irish history Q&A sessions. Casement, as Roland Philipps underlines in his new biography of the humanitarian and Irish rebel, was a modern figure. Broken Archangel is a biography that sets out to provide a portrait of Casement’s career in its entirety. It is a book that will particularly suit readers who may have only encountered Casement briefly in the footnotes of someone else’s story.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Maurice J. Casey is a Research Fellow in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals is forthcoming with Footnote Press.
That summer I attended a panel discussion about Casement at the Kilkenny Arts Festival. Most of the audience’s questions suggested national pride in Casement as a suitable hero for a country buoyed by its newfound status as a progressive nation. But one audience member was at odds with the wider consensus: he accused the panel of slandering the dead patriot by accepting the authenticity of diaries in which Casement recorded his homosexual encounters. The ghost of Roger Casement, it seemed, was receiving questions from the floor.
A century on from his execution, Casement’s contradictions still incite passionate responses – and not only in the atypically febrile atmosphere of Irish history Q&A sessions. Casement, as Roland Philipps underlines in his new biography of the humanitarian and Irish rebel, was a modern figure. Broken Archangel is a biography that sets out to provide a portrait of Casement’s career in its entirety. It is a book that will particularly suit readers who may have only encountered Casement briefly in the footnotes of someone else’s story.
Read the rest of the review at HistoryToday.com.
Maurice J. Casey is a Research Fellow in the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals is forthcoming with Footnote Press.
June 22, 2024
An interesting and very readable account of a complex character. I would have preferred more detail of Casement’s early humanitarian work in Congo and South America, and less emphasis on his later years in Germany.
July 5, 2024
While it was great to have all the context as to why he found himself on the Aud, there was perhaps too much information.
July 20, 2025
Broken Archangel - EXPOSED
Roland Philipps’ Casement biography blindfolds readers by suppressing vital evidence
The front cover of Broken Archangel bears a photo of Casement with the original perspective manipulated to suggest a disturbed, fractured personality. Thus with his judgment of Casement posted on the front cover, Philipps effectively announces his lack of impartiality, his loyalty to the dishonest Inglis template and unwittingly reveals his motive for writing what turns out to be a nothing-new biography.
On the opening page, anxious to appear ‘up-front’, Philipps announces that when Casement went to Africa at age 20 he was unaware of being homosexual and confirms no-one else knew for the following thirty years. Philipps does not explain how he can know this when he admits Casement did not know. Better than mind reading or artificial intelligence - this is divine intelligence. Likewise when Philipps on page 281 and in a podcast overhears a private conversation between Casement and Dick Morten in the prison cell.
Philipps describes his study as “a modern look” at Casement but his portrait is identical in all respects to that invented by Inglis over fifty years ago. His Casement is a lonely misfit, emotionally unstable and impulsive, tortured by forbidden instincts, a damaged dreamer and idealist, lifelong victim of a dysfunctional childhood and subject to paranoia and depression.
Broken Archangel, acclaimed for the depth and accuracy of its research, compels readers to ask how the author got so much wrong. For example, on page 54 he states that Castlereagh was Prime Minister: in a podcast he asserts Pearse visited Casement in Germany: on page 127 he describes Eoin MacNeill as an archeologist and Chairman of the IRB. All these are false. He also claims absurdly that Casement planned to invade Ireland with the Irish Brigade and gives recruit numbers varying from fifteen to sixty. On page 306 he refers to a ‘conclusive scientific analysis’ but fails to name the Giles Report while his podcasts give the wrong date. He misnames John Quinn of New York as Joseph and alleges that Casement “never made friends” which is utterly false. He wrongly reports that Casement converted to Catholicism when he was reconciled to the church. Repeating these falsehoods in promotional podcasts indicates that his final draft was not impartially assessed by an expert before publication as is standard practice.
But in addition to factual blunders due to Philipps’ shaky grasp of events, there are many serious falsehoods which illustrate how little he can be trusted. Falsehoods emerge when Philipps tackles the provenance of the trunks and diaries. With good reason, he refuses the official date of 25th April and the official version of luggage spontaneously delivered to Scotland Yard by a former landlord. In his Irish Examiner podcast Philipps claims that during the first interrogation on 23rd April a constable announced that the police had found the trunks in his former lodgings. According to Philipps, Casement said there was nothing in the trunks “just a few diaries and things.” He suggests that Casement had forgotten the scandalous contents or considered them unimportant. Once again Philipps refers only to the 1903 diary whereas the police record states a notebook, three diaries and a cash ledger and moreover that record states the trunks were not found by the police in his former lodgings but were delivered to Scotland Yard on 25th April by a former landlord. The comment “just a few diaries and things” does not appear in the interrogation transcript because it is entirely Philipps’ invention. Then in his RTE podcast and on pages 215 and 260 Philipps unambiguously repudiates this account by confirming what many others believe that the trunks were found and opened in December1914, not in 1916. But with this version there are major problems which Philipps cannot solve and which he wisely ignores. For example, he cannot explain why the police records are false nor can he explain why for over a year the police covered up their alleged discovery of the obscene diaries rather than exploit them at once.
When dealing with Casement’s brief stay in Oslo, Philipps’ loses control and resorts to chicanery. Foreign Office documents relating to Casement in Oslo and the period following consist of extensive correspondence between Findlay and Nicolson in Whitehall. These letters which Philipps has read in The National Archives (cited as his sources FO 133/107, 337/107, KV 2/6) make very clear that no betrayal by Christensen happened and that Findlay was duped into issuing the bribe. Faithful to Inglis’ duplicity because he has no choice, Philipps nonetheless makes a mess of it. In a podcast he describes 42 year-old First Secretary Lindley, the Minister’s right-hand man and soon to be ambassador, as a clerk, a junior official who sent a telegram to Whitehall with the first scandal allegation when in fact Lindley’s four-page handwritten memo was sent by diplomatic bag. Philipps’ RTE podcast falsely claims Lindley offered money to Christensen while on page 161 he cites from Lindley’s memo that no money was sought or offered. He alleges that the FO reprimanded Findlay for offering a bribe of £5,000. False again - the FO documents show that Whitehall had authorized the bribe assuming Findlay would not be so dumb as to write it on legation notepaper for Christensen. When Casement publicized the bribe, Findlay was severely castigated for being duped all along.
Philipps often alleges Casement’s parents were alcoholics citing his mother’s death certificate reference to cirrhosis of the liver. He supports this slur by another slur suggesting her illegitimacy. Alcohol is only one of many causes of cirrhosis; others include hepatitis, diabetes, certain genetic conditions, fatty liver disease, obesity and cystic fibrosis. Philipps favours alcoholism in order to insinuate the family was dysfunctional which he says contributed to Casement’s alleged emotional instability.
There is much that is missing in Philipps’ narrative; there is no mention of US journalist Ben Allen’s viewing of the mysterious rolled manuscript nor is journalist Singleton-Gates mentioned despite him receiving the typescripts from Thomson. Casement’s genuine 1910 manuscript The Amazon Journal is ignored though listed in the bibliography. Nothing is said of Sullivan’s detestation of Casement.
There are 326 pages of narrative, many thousands of words but one crucial word is missing. That crucial word appears in other Casement studies and it features in the Home Office files of the late 1950s. It is a core word in Anatomy of a lie. That Philipps avoids this word is of maximum significance since its total absence destroys any credibility in his book. The word is ‘typescript’. Philipps simply ignores the existence of the police typescripts which were shown in 1916. This is effectively a denial of their existence and of the vital role they played in the defamatory campaign. It is important to understand why Philipps avoids the typescripts. His suppression of the material fact of the typescripts is intentional; it opens the way for strategic deceit aimed at opposing the powerful evidence in Anatomy of a lie by reasserting the alleged existence of the manuscript diaries in 1916. But what Philipps thought would pass unnoticed is here exposed as a fatal error. Here are some of the crucial lies he smuggled into his narrative after suppressing the typescripts.
1 - On page 281 he claims Sullivan was given the diaries but refused to read them. This is false. Sergeant Sullivan was given the police typescripts as verified by his junior Artemus Jones who did read them.
2 - On page 309 he claims the Reverend John Harris was shown photographs of diary extracts but this is false. HO 144/1636…3A confirms Harris was shown the typescripts by instruction of the Home Secretary.
3 - On page 280 Philipps asserts that ‘Smith offered to enter the diaries into evidence.’ This too is false. Attorney General Smith offered the police typescripts again as verified by Jones.
4 - On page 307 Philipps says the diaries were examined by two psychiatrists and this is untrue. They examined the 1911 typescript and ledger. This is confirmed by PRO HO 144/1636/311643/40 where Doctors Smith and Craig report “We have read and considered the copies of the diary dated 1st January to 31st December 1911 …” (emphasis added.)
5 - On page 311 Philipps claims Thomson showed ‘the diary’ to the US Ambassador and his source is Thomson’s letter to Blackwell who described the diary as ‘…many pages of closely typed matter…’. Philipps does not tell his readers that the Ambassador was given two photographs of extracts from the 1911 typescript as verified by HO 144/23481.
6 – On page 279 Philipps asserts that photographs of pages torn from the 1903 diary were shown to journalists by Captain Hall. No other Casement author has ever made this claim and Philipps gives no source. Neither Philipps nor anyone else has ever reported seeing these photos; nonetheless Philipps is miraculously able to cite from the unseen photos which he claims report erotic encounters similar to those on the extant diary pages. If Philipps had a source for this claim, he would have cited it. He had no source and therefore his claim is a lie.
Several factors provide strong evidence that Broken Archangel was intended as a response to Anatomy of a lie. While the falsehoods and deceit were necessary, the factual errors, incoherence and confusion might be explained by his use of artificial intelligence which is notoriously unreliable since it garbles information indiscriminately from diverse sources. But the very scant treatment of the diaries controversy and the total suppression of the police typescripts indicates that Philipps recognized the rigorous treatment in Anatomy of a lie could not be challenged. Moreover, it is a fact that each time authenticity was challenged in the past defensive action was taken. Soon after Maloney’s 1936 book the Bigger plot threatened rumours of more diaries. MacColl’s hostile study pre-empted Noyes’ 1957 Justice for Casement and on its publication, The Sunday Times conjured from nowhere the forged confessional poem The Nameless One - attributed to Casement. Mitchell’s 1997 Amazon Journal with its forgery argument was simultaneously countered by Sawyer’s Roger Casement’s Diaries. And twelve months after reissue of Anatomy of a lie, this nothing-new biography appeared.
There is no new information in Philipps’ study, no new perception and nothing that was not already contained in the 1973 Inglis biography. It is fair to ask why it was commissioned and why it has received such intensive, costly promotion and saturation marketing. Every newspaper of repute in the UK and Ireland has reviewed it positively and there are at least six podcasts. It was launched at The Casement Summer School and promoted at the Irish Cultural Centre in London. That it appeared exactly one year after the reissue of Anatomy of a lie looks like cause and effect. Might that explain why Philipps claims somewhat improbably that he has never heard of the highly controversial Anatomy of a lie? Is it probable that no-one in London or Dublin publishing mentioned it to him? Could it be that he never saw any of the Village articles?
Philipps ignored the evidence and arguments in Anatomy of a lie and therefore had to rely on the fabricated portrait of the disturbed, unstable, impulsive homosexual, a portrait that would, however, perform as evidence of authenticity since only a fractured personality would write the diaries.
Despite the avalanche of publicity, Broken Archangel is profoundly cynical, evasive and deceitful. Abysmally researched, written in bad faith and burdened with false data, errors and demonstrable lies, it abuses the trust of uninformed readers. That the media has acclaimed this fraudulent book is a servile act of self-abasement.
Paul R Hyde, July 2025
Roland Philipps’ Casement biography blindfolds readers by suppressing vital evidence
The front cover of Broken Archangel bears a photo of Casement with the original perspective manipulated to suggest a disturbed, fractured personality. Thus with his judgment of Casement posted on the front cover, Philipps effectively announces his lack of impartiality, his loyalty to the dishonest Inglis template and unwittingly reveals his motive for writing what turns out to be a nothing-new biography.
On the opening page, anxious to appear ‘up-front’, Philipps announces that when Casement went to Africa at age 20 he was unaware of being homosexual and confirms no-one else knew for the following thirty years. Philipps does not explain how he can know this when he admits Casement did not know. Better than mind reading or artificial intelligence - this is divine intelligence. Likewise when Philipps on page 281 and in a podcast overhears a private conversation between Casement and Dick Morten in the prison cell.
Philipps describes his study as “a modern look” at Casement but his portrait is identical in all respects to that invented by Inglis over fifty years ago. His Casement is a lonely misfit, emotionally unstable and impulsive, tortured by forbidden instincts, a damaged dreamer and idealist, lifelong victim of a dysfunctional childhood and subject to paranoia and depression.
Broken Archangel, acclaimed for the depth and accuracy of its research, compels readers to ask how the author got so much wrong. For example, on page 54 he states that Castlereagh was Prime Minister: in a podcast he asserts Pearse visited Casement in Germany: on page 127 he describes Eoin MacNeill as an archeologist and Chairman of the IRB. All these are false. He also claims absurdly that Casement planned to invade Ireland with the Irish Brigade and gives recruit numbers varying from fifteen to sixty. On page 306 he refers to a ‘conclusive scientific analysis’ but fails to name the Giles Report while his podcasts give the wrong date. He misnames John Quinn of New York as Joseph and alleges that Casement “never made friends” which is utterly false. He wrongly reports that Casement converted to Catholicism when he was reconciled to the church. Repeating these falsehoods in promotional podcasts indicates that his final draft was not impartially assessed by an expert before publication as is standard practice.
But in addition to factual blunders due to Philipps’ shaky grasp of events, there are many serious falsehoods which illustrate how little he can be trusted. Falsehoods emerge when Philipps tackles the provenance of the trunks and diaries. With good reason, he refuses the official date of 25th April and the official version of luggage spontaneously delivered to Scotland Yard by a former landlord. In his Irish Examiner podcast Philipps claims that during the first interrogation on 23rd April a constable announced that the police had found the trunks in his former lodgings. According to Philipps, Casement said there was nothing in the trunks “just a few diaries and things.” He suggests that Casement had forgotten the scandalous contents or considered them unimportant. Once again Philipps refers only to the 1903 diary whereas the police record states a notebook, three diaries and a cash ledger and moreover that record states the trunks were not found by the police in his former lodgings but were delivered to Scotland Yard on 25th April by a former landlord. The comment “just a few diaries and things” does not appear in the interrogation transcript because it is entirely Philipps’ invention. Then in his RTE podcast and on pages 215 and 260 Philipps unambiguously repudiates this account by confirming what many others believe that the trunks were found and opened in December1914, not in 1916. But with this version there are major problems which Philipps cannot solve and which he wisely ignores. For example, he cannot explain why the police records are false nor can he explain why for over a year the police covered up their alleged discovery of the obscene diaries rather than exploit them at once.
When dealing with Casement’s brief stay in Oslo, Philipps’ loses control and resorts to chicanery. Foreign Office documents relating to Casement in Oslo and the period following consist of extensive correspondence between Findlay and Nicolson in Whitehall. These letters which Philipps has read in The National Archives (cited as his sources FO 133/107, 337/107, KV 2/6) make very clear that no betrayal by Christensen happened and that Findlay was duped into issuing the bribe. Faithful to Inglis’ duplicity because he has no choice, Philipps nonetheless makes a mess of it. In a podcast he describes 42 year-old First Secretary Lindley, the Minister’s right-hand man and soon to be ambassador, as a clerk, a junior official who sent a telegram to Whitehall with the first scandal allegation when in fact Lindley’s four-page handwritten memo was sent by diplomatic bag. Philipps’ RTE podcast falsely claims Lindley offered money to Christensen while on page 161 he cites from Lindley’s memo that no money was sought or offered. He alleges that the FO reprimanded Findlay for offering a bribe of £5,000. False again - the FO documents show that Whitehall had authorized the bribe assuming Findlay would not be so dumb as to write it on legation notepaper for Christensen. When Casement publicized the bribe, Findlay was severely castigated for being duped all along.
Philipps often alleges Casement’s parents were alcoholics citing his mother’s death certificate reference to cirrhosis of the liver. He supports this slur by another slur suggesting her illegitimacy. Alcohol is only one of many causes of cirrhosis; others include hepatitis, diabetes, certain genetic conditions, fatty liver disease, obesity and cystic fibrosis. Philipps favours alcoholism in order to insinuate the family was dysfunctional which he says contributed to Casement’s alleged emotional instability.
There is much that is missing in Philipps’ narrative; there is no mention of US journalist Ben Allen’s viewing of the mysterious rolled manuscript nor is journalist Singleton-Gates mentioned despite him receiving the typescripts from Thomson. Casement’s genuine 1910 manuscript The Amazon Journal is ignored though listed in the bibliography. Nothing is said of Sullivan’s detestation of Casement.
There are 326 pages of narrative, many thousands of words but one crucial word is missing. That crucial word appears in other Casement studies and it features in the Home Office files of the late 1950s. It is a core word in Anatomy of a lie. That Philipps avoids this word is of maximum significance since its total absence destroys any credibility in his book. The word is ‘typescript’. Philipps simply ignores the existence of the police typescripts which were shown in 1916. This is effectively a denial of their existence and of the vital role they played in the defamatory campaign. It is important to understand why Philipps avoids the typescripts. His suppression of the material fact of the typescripts is intentional; it opens the way for strategic deceit aimed at opposing the powerful evidence in Anatomy of a lie by reasserting the alleged existence of the manuscript diaries in 1916. But what Philipps thought would pass unnoticed is here exposed as a fatal error. Here are some of the crucial lies he smuggled into his narrative after suppressing the typescripts.
1 - On page 281 he claims Sullivan was given the diaries but refused to read them. This is false. Sergeant Sullivan was given the police typescripts as verified by his junior Artemus Jones who did read them.
2 - On page 309 he claims the Reverend John Harris was shown photographs of diary extracts but this is false. HO 144/1636…3A confirms Harris was shown the typescripts by instruction of the Home Secretary.
3 - On page 280 Philipps asserts that ‘Smith offered to enter the diaries into evidence.’ This too is false. Attorney General Smith offered the police typescripts again as verified by Jones.
4 - On page 307 Philipps says the diaries were examined by two psychiatrists and this is untrue. They examined the 1911 typescript and ledger. This is confirmed by PRO HO 144/1636/311643/40 where Doctors Smith and Craig report “We have read and considered the copies of the diary dated 1st January to 31st December 1911 …” (emphasis added.)
5 - On page 311 Philipps claims Thomson showed ‘the diary’ to the US Ambassador and his source is Thomson’s letter to Blackwell who described the diary as ‘…many pages of closely typed matter…’. Philipps does not tell his readers that the Ambassador was given two photographs of extracts from the 1911 typescript as verified by HO 144/23481.
6 – On page 279 Philipps asserts that photographs of pages torn from the 1903 diary were shown to journalists by Captain Hall. No other Casement author has ever made this claim and Philipps gives no source. Neither Philipps nor anyone else has ever reported seeing these photos; nonetheless Philipps is miraculously able to cite from the unseen photos which he claims report erotic encounters similar to those on the extant diary pages. If Philipps had a source for this claim, he would have cited it. He had no source and therefore his claim is a lie.
Several factors provide strong evidence that Broken Archangel was intended as a response to Anatomy of a lie. While the falsehoods and deceit were necessary, the factual errors, incoherence and confusion might be explained by his use of artificial intelligence which is notoriously unreliable since it garbles information indiscriminately from diverse sources. But the very scant treatment of the diaries controversy and the total suppression of the police typescripts indicates that Philipps recognized the rigorous treatment in Anatomy of a lie could not be challenged. Moreover, it is a fact that each time authenticity was challenged in the past defensive action was taken. Soon after Maloney’s 1936 book the Bigger plot threatened rumours of more diaries. MacColl’s hostile study pre-empted Noyes’ 1957 Justice for Casement and on its publication, The Sunday Times conjured from nowhere the forged confessional poem The Nameless One - attributed to Casement. Mitchell’s 1997 Amazon Journal with its forgery argument was simultaneously countered by Sawyer’s Roger Casement’s Diaries. And twelve months after reissue of Anatomy of a lie, this nothing-new biography appeared.
There is no new information in Philipps’ study, no new perception and nothing that was not already contained in the 1973 Inglis biography. It is fair to ask why it was commissioned and why it has received such intensive, costly promotion and saturation marketing. Every newspaper of repute in the UK and Ireland has reviewed it positively and there are at least six podcasts. It was launched at The Casement Summer School and promoted at the Irish Cultural Centre in London. That it appeared exactly one year after the reissue of Anatomy of a lie looks like cause and effect. Might that explain why Philipps claims somewhat improbably that he has never heard of the highly controversial Anatomy of a lie? Is it probable that no-one in London or Dublin publishing mentioned it to him? Could it be that he never saw any of the Village articles?
Philipps ignored the evidence and arguments in Anatomy of a lie and therefore had to rely on the fabricated portrait of the disturbed, unstable, impulsive homosexual, a portrait that would, however, perform as evidence of authenticity since only a fractured personality would write the diaries.
Despite the avalanche of publicity, Broken Archangel is profoundly cynical, evasive and deceitful. Abysmally researched, written in bad faith and burdened with false data, errors and demonstrable lies, it abuses the trust of uninformed readers. That the media has acclaimed this fraudulent book is a servile act of self-abasement.
Paul R Hyde, July 2025
February 3, 2025
A wonderful telling of a wild , courageous, and tragic life.
November 2, 2025
I was left dissatisfied with this account of Roger Casement’s life; his troubled childhood is hardly discussed, and not until several chapters into the book, yet his difficult relationship with his parents and the maternal role that his sister played seem so important in understanding his character. The author’s attitude to his subject is unclear: he’s clearly not a fan of Casement’s poetry (fair enough), but he also seems rather detached from him. I had the feeling that Philipps had spent too long having to read Casement’s diaries and correspondence, which don’t sound that inspiring, and had somehow lost the overall picture of Casement’s life. It comes over as dry a lot of the time, and Casement’s life was anything but dry.
November 23, 2025
A very detailed account of his work in the Congo, Amazon and the fight for Irish independence.
But next to nothing on his childhood, which would have been nice to know.
But next to nothing on his childhood, which would have been nice to know.
October 5, 2025
By the time he was 50, Sir Roger Casement had lived an admirable and selfless life. He revealed the untold horror endured by the victims of imperial aggression, in both Africa and South America. He had an adoring circle of powerful friends and looked ready to live out a contented retirement.
He was then seized by a ferocious and in many ways unexpected dedication to Irish Nationalism which basically did for him. All his life he felt and actually was rootless. The son of a broken home, he was baptised twice - as first a Protestant and then a Catholic. After years of defending the rights of indigenous populations exploited by colonial powers, he realised late in his life that the Irish were just such a population. Events like WW1 and the Easter Rising convinced him to devote himself to the cause of Irish Freedom. The book gives a good account of how support from overseas helped him advance his cause. Had he drawn a tighter limit of what help from overseas was acceptable, he might not have taken the fateful step of looking for help to the German Empire. During the first world war the country of Ireland was still, however reluctantly, part of the British Empire. Collaboration with Germany was seen as treason, even among the Irish, who had signed up in large numbers to fight for Britain.
Surprisingly, the story of his failed attempt to run guns to the Irish rebels, his capture and trial, are perhaps the least exciting chapters in the book. His sentencing and the events leading up to his execution are poignantly laid out. The smearing of his reputation through selective disclosure of excerpts from his diary is shameful and outrageous by our 21st Century standards, especially in relation to his homosexuality.
Ultimately a sad and moving tale of a good man who fell victim to his honesty and naïve single mindedness.
He was then seized by a ferocious and in many ways unexpected dedication to Irish Nationalism which basically did for him. All his life he felt and actually was rootless. The son of a broken home, he was baptised twice - as first a Protestant and then a Catholic. After years of defending the rights of indigenous populations exploited by colonial powers, he realised late in his life that the Irish were just such a population. Events like WW1 and the Easter Rising convinced him to devote himself to the cause of Irish Freedom. The book gives a good account of how support from overseas helped him advance his cause. Had he drawn a tighter limit of what help from overseas was acceptable, he might not have taken the fateful step of looking for help to the German Empire. During the first world war the country of Ireland was still, however reluctantly, part of the British Empire. Collaboration with Germany was seen as treason, even among the Irish, who had signed up in large numbers to fight for Britain.
Surprisingly, the story of his failed attempt to run guns to the Irish rebels, his capture and trial, are perhaps the least exciting chapters in the book. His sentencing and the events leading up to his execution are poignantly laid out. The smearing of his reputation through selective disclosure of excerpts from his diary is shameful and outrageous by our 21st Century standards, especially in relation to his homosexuality.
Ultimately a sad and moving tale of a good man who fell victim to his honesty and naïve single mindedness.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews