Con Colbert

16 Lives

by John O'Callaghan

A biography of Con Colbert, member of Na Fianna Éireann, the Irish Volunteers and the Irish Republican Brotherhood.
Colbert commanded forces at Watkins' brewery and Jameson's distillery during the Easter Rising. He faced the firing squad at Kilmainham Gaol on 8 May 1916, aged twenty-seven.

Genres: History, Irish Literature, Biography

255 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2015

Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 4 out of 5]

With Con Colbert, John O'Callaghan has produced one of the finest entries in the “16 Lives” series. It is concentrated, short and to the point—like the life of the dedicated young revolutionary who gives the book its name.

Con Colbert, who left County Limerick at sixteen to clerk at a bakery in Dublin, was already an enthusiastic reader of Irish history and a lover of Irish independence. In the city he soon became a cultural nationalist and a budding revolutionary. At seventeen, he joined the new Irish boy scouts (Fianna Eireann) and rose to the rank of Chief Scout (and chief IRB contact within it), eventually joining the faculty of Padraig Pearse's school St. Enda's as a drill instructor and teacher of physical culture. Although he liked the young ladies and they in turn seemed to favor the athletic young man (in spite of his short stature), he refused to court them, sensing he might soon have to sacrifice himself for the cause. Throughout his brief life of twenty-seven years, he remained a non-drinker, a non-smoker, and a devoutly orthodox Roman Catholic.

I liked everything about Callaghan's book, but I particularly enjoyed the section on Fianna Eireann for the way the group was treated as a serious revolutionary organization but also as club for boys at play: on maneuvers, they compiled useful military reconnaissance on terrain and supplies (hillocks, gullies, dairies, etc.), while in Dublin they “played” at “capture the flag” with the Baden-Powell boy scouts' brand-new Union Jack.

I also enjoyed his account of the uneventful, almost comic occupation of Watkins Brewery during “The Rising.” Its location turned out to be largely irrelevant, its occupiers most memorable “sorties” involving the confiscation of random goods to feed the occupying force. It is a pity that such a negligible event led to the execution by firing squad of a leader as brave and determined as Colbert.

I would recommend this little book to any lover of Irish revolutionary history. Biographer O'Callaghan was given a modest task to perform, and he does so with dedication, intelligence and dispatch. Exactly the way Con Colbert lived every day of his life.

[Caoimhin Gabhann · Rating 4 out of 5]

I listened to the author John talk earlier this year before the pandemic in UCD. I enjoyed his contribution.

This is the first of the 16 lives series I have read. I deliberately chose what to me was one of the least known of our leaders of 1916.
Arguably Con was not an official leader but his presence and organisational skill, and his steadfast devotion to the Irish republic leaves him deservedly sitting in history with the signatories and martyrs of 1916.
Rest well son of Ireland.

[Differengenera · Rating 4 out of 5]

author seems to have a lot of contempt for his subject