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1916: The Easter Rising
An account of the events, personalities and repercussions of the Irish rebellion
The Easter Rising began at 12 noon, 24 April, 1916 and lasted for six short but bloody days, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians, the destruction of many parts of Dublin, and the true beginning of Irish independence.
The 1916 Rising was born out of the Conservative and Unionist parties' illegal defiance of the democratically expressed wish of the Irish electorate for Home Rule; and of confusion, mishap and disorganisation, compounded by a split within the Volunteer leadership.
Tim Pat Coogan introduces the major players, themes and outcomes of a drama that would profoundly affect twentieth-century Irish history. Not only is this the story of a turning point in Ireland's struggle for freedom, but also a testament to the men and women of courage and conviction who were prepared to give their lives for what they believed was right.
The Easter Rising began at 12 noon, 24 April, 1916 and lasted for six short but bloody days, resulting in the deaths of innocent civilians, the destruction of many parts of Dublin, and the true beginning of Irish independence.
The 1916 Rising was born out of the Conservative and Unionist parties' illegal defiance of the democratically expressed wish of the Irish electorate for Home Rule; and of confusion, mishap and disorganisation, compounded by a split within the Volunteer leadership.
Tim Pat Coogan introduces the major players, themes and outcomes of a drama that would profoundly affect twentieth-century Irish history. Not only is this the story of a turning point in Ireland's struggle for freedom, but also a testament to the men and women of courage and conviction who were prepared to give their lives for what they believed was right.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
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About the author
Tim Pat Coogan
50 books243 followersTimothy Patrick Coogan is an Irish historical writer, broadcaster and newspaper columnist. He served as editor of the Irish Press newspaper from 1968 to 1987. Today, he is best known for his popular and sometimes controversial books on aspects of modern Irish history, including The IRA, Ireland Since the Rising, On the Blanket, and biographies of Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews
April 20, 2025
1916 was a vitally important year in Irish history. On Easter Monday of that year, while the Great War raged in Europe, a group of Irish rebels rose up against British rule in Ireland. The Easter Rising failed, as had many other Irish rebellions in the past – but it left a lasting cultural imprint that fueled later and ultimately successful efforts to secure Irish independence from Great Britain, as Tim Pat Coogan chronicles in his 2001 book 1916: The Easter Rising.
Author Coogan, a former Irish Press editor, has written several books dealing with Irish history; I read his 1996 book The Troubles whilst travelling in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, and other parts of Northern Ireland. Coogan, with his thoroughgoing knowledge of how the Irish past influences the Irish present, sees a number of factors as leading to the Easter Rising.
Indeed, Coogan looks all the way back to 1800 and the Act of Union that linked Ireland more directly with Great Britain, stating that the act “deprived Ireland of real political power and in addition had the collateral effect of destroying the briefly flowering artistic, economic, and political life of Dublin” (p. 16), causing many of the most talented and ambitious Irish people to leave Dublin for London. Coogan then links the Act of Union with “the Great Famine of the 1840’s”, seeing the famine of 1847-51 as “both the inevitable and the most glaring example of depriving the Irish of the ability to address their own problems” (p. 16).
Readers who are used to hearing about nationalist groups like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerging as the most flagrant advocates of violence might be surprised to hear that, in the context of British efforts to reintroduce some measure of Home Rule into Ireland, the groups that were doing the most to threaten violence were Protestant groups. While “No Irish organisation proclaimed its loyalty as loudly as did the Orangemen” (p. 18), militant Protestants made clear that they would not quietly submit to proposed Irish Home Rule measures. For them, Irish Home Rule meant going from being in the majority in a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to being in a minority within a Home Rule government on the island of Ireland; and they found any such change completely unacceptable - a stab in the back from London, and one to which they were prepared to respond with violence if they deemed it necessary.
While Coogan dutifully acknowledges that the Orange Order “had and has a substantial fraternal and benevolent component”, his opinion of political Orangeism is clear: “Later it would develop in America, manifesting itself in such movements as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan. The Order also proved useful to employers as a device for keeping Protestant and Catholic workers from uniting for better wages and conditions” (pp. 18-19). Coogan will get no invitations to Twelfth of July parades after writing this book, I warrant.
In response to the formation of an armed Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), nationalists formed a volunteer movement of their own; London “reacted to the [nationalist] Volunteers’ formation by issuing a ban on the importation of arms, although no such ban had followed the formation of the UVF – another clear indication to Nationalists that there was one law for them and another for the Ulster Volunteer Force” (p. 51). The nationalist republicans believed that Irish Catholics and Ulster Protestants had plenty of common interests, but Coogan disagrees: “Behind the noble aspirations of the Republicans, there lay the unpalatable and unacknowledged reality that the outcome of Republicanism striving to be free and Orangeism seeking to maintain its supremacy must inevitably be conflict” (p. 52).
There is a tone of grim foreboding to the early passages of 1916: The Easter Rising: “The final rehearsals for the 1916 drama, before the curtain eventually went up on Easter Monday, was a combination of Murphy’s Law and stark tragedy. The blundering and mishaps on the part of the three central actors – the Irish, the British, and the Germans – would have been funny had they not been so fateful” (p. 73).
The run-up to the Rising mixed the grimly comic – some pathetically unsuccessful attempts by Imperial German forces to supply arms to the Irish rebels – with some foreshadowings of tragedy, as rebel leaders, from the dedicated socialist James Connolly to the poetically minded Pádraig Pearse, saw that their support was significantly less than expected, but decided to proceed with their efforts anyway.
It all began on 24 April, Easter Monday, in 1916, when the rebels took over the General Post Office in Dublin and raised a green flag adorned with gold letters reading “IRISH REPUBLIC.” Seven leaders of the Rising signed their names to a Proclamation of a Provisional Government for the Irish Republic – a document that I’ve seen copies of in many an Irish bar across the United States and Canada.
Postal customers in the GPO, and other ordinary Dubliners, seem at first to have been more nonplussed than anything else, wondering if the whole thing might be nothing more than a group of lads off on a lark – until the shooting started. From that point, events took on a momentum of their own. The violence, once it had started, intensified, as Irish rebels dug in where they had established themselves, and British forces brought in more and more men and materiel to try to quash the Rising.
Some of the most powerful passages in Coogan’s 1916: The Easter Rising emphasize well the harsh violence of the urban warfare that occurred in Dublin, as when Coogan writes of how,
outside the GPO itself, the principal theatre of death was on a section of the main road between Dublin and Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) lying on either side of Mount Street Bridge….Along this roadway, a group of Volunteers under the command of Captain Michael Malone made of the area what was described subsequently as either ‘Dublin’s Dardanelles’ or an ‘Irish Thermopylae’….[A]long the Mount Street Bridge approaches, a handful of insurgents inflicted some half of all the casualties suffered by the British during that week. The battle site could legitimately be held up as a paradigm of all the slaughter and waste on the Western Front. (pp. 100-01).
The Rising, of course, failed after six days – and readers who are new to the topic may be surprised, upon looking at some of the photos that Coogan includes, to see how much damage was done to the heart of Dublin during the fighting. The rebels surrendered unconditionally, and were taken prisoner. Ordinary Dubliners, many of whom thought that the British Government was doing its best, in the midst of a world war, to move toward eventual implementation of Irish Home Rule, generally denounced the Rising as a stupid, foolish, unnecessary exercise in violence – until the British responded with their own stupid, foolish, and unnecessary exercise in violence, executing 16 of the rebel leaders.
At Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, on my last visit to the Republic of Ireland, I saw the site where James Connolly, badly wounded in the Rising, was tied to a chair so he could be shot by a British firing squad. The impact that this grotesque act had on public opinion, in both Ireland and Great Britain, was considerable. For many, it summed up all that was bad and wrong and thoughtless and cruel from centuries of English or British rule in Ireland.
As Coogan points out, William Butler Yeats’s immortal poem “Easter 1916” conveys quite well the ambiguity of Ireland’s response to the Rising. Yeats asks, with regard to the Rising and its violence, “Was it needless death after all?/For England may keep faith” – a reference to that lingering hope that London would opt for Irish Home Rule, in spite of the opposition of Ulster Protestants. Yet as Yeats makes his way through a roll call of executed leaders of the Rising – “MacDonagh and MacBride/And Connolly and Pearse” – he finds himself concluding that there is something about the Easter Rising that makes it fundamentally different from all those other Irish rebellions against English or British rule:
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
It is for that reason that Coogan writes that “After the Rising, events in Ireland proceeded, like bankruptcy, in two ways: gradually and suddenly. Within a few months, public opinion had swung against London so much that the prisoners became more of an embarrassment in jail than at liberty, and by Christmas many were set free, Michael Collins among them” (p. 151). History records that Collins developed his own tactics for combatting British rule in Ireland, in a manner that proved ultimately more successful than the Rising had been.
An ”Aftermath” chapter recounts some major events of “the Troubles,” the Northern Ireland civil conflict of 1969-98, and then brings the reader forward into the post-Good Friday Agreement era of Ireland’s history. Looking at stubborn political disagreements between the Catholic/nationalist and Protestant/unionist communities in Northern Ireland as of 2001, Coogan notes nationalist fears that the unionists are still seeking “to avoid sharing power with Catholics, reacting toward the Good Friday Agreement as did their ancestors to the Home Rule Bill almost a century ago. The narrative continues” (p. 157).
1916: The Easter Rising is a concise and well-crafted recounting of the “terrible beauty” of a vitally important moment from Ireland’s modern history.
Author Coogan, a former Irish Press editor, has written several books dealing with Irish history; I read his 1996 book The Troubles whilst travelling in Belfast, Derry/Londonderry, and other parts of Northern Ireland. Coogan, with his thoroughgoing knowledge of how the Irish past influences the Irish present, sees a number of factors as leading to the Easter Rising.
Indeed, Coogan looks all the way back to 1800 and the Act of Union that linked Ireland more directly with Great Britain, stating that the act “deprived Ireland of real political power and in addition had the collateral effect of destroying the briefly flowering artistic, economic, and political life of Dublin” (p. 16), causing many of the most talented and ambitious Irish people to leave Dublin for London. Coogan then links the Act of Union with “the Great Famine of the 1840’s”, seeing the famine of 1847-51 as “both the inevitable and the most glaring example of depriving the Irish of the ability to address their own problems” (p. 16).
Readers who are used to hearing about nationalist groups like the Irish Republican Army (IRA) emerging as the most flagrant advocates of violence might be surprised to hear that, in the context of British efforts to reintroduce some measure of Home Rule into Ireland, the groups that were doing the most to threaten violence were Protestant groups. While “No Irish organisation proclaimed its loyalty as loudly as did the Orangemen” (p. 18), militant Protestants made clear that they would not quietly submit to proposed Irish Home Rule measures. For them, Irish Home Rule meant going from being in the majority in a United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, to being in a minority within a Home Rule government on the island of Ireland; and they found any such change completely unacceptable - a stab in the back from London, and one to which they were prepared to respond with violence if they deemed it necessary.
While Coogan dutifully acknowledges that the Orange Order “had and has a substantial fraternal and benevolent component”, his opinion of political Orangeism is clear: “Later it would develop in America, manifesting itself in such movements as the Know Nothings and the Ku Klux Klan. The Order also proved useful to employers as a device for keeping Protestant and Catholic workers from uniting for better wages and conditions” (pp. 18-19). Coogan will get no invitations to Twelfth of July parades after writing this book, I warrant.
In response to the formation of an armed Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF), nationalists formed a volunteer movement of their own; London “reacted to the [nationalist] Volunteers’ formation by issuing a ban on the importation of arms, although no such ban had followed the formation of the UVF – another clear indication to Nationalists that there was one law for them and another for the Ulster Volunteer Force” (p. 51). The nationalist republicans believed that Irish Catholics and Ulster Protestants had plenty of common interests, but Coogan disagrees: “Behind the noble aspirations of the Republicans, there lay the unpalatable and unacknowledged reality that the outcome of Republicanism striving to be free and Orangeism seeking to maintain its supremacy must inevitably be conflict” (p. 52).
There is a tone of grim foreboding to the early passages of 1916: The Easter Rising: “The final rehearsals for the 1916 drama, before the curtain eventually went up on Easter Monday, was a combination of Murphy’s Law and stark tragedy. The blundering and mishaps on the part of the three central actors – the Irish, the British, and the Germans – would have been funny had they not been so fateful” (p. 73).
The run-up to the Rising mixed the grimly comic – some pathetically unsuccessful attempts by Imperial German forces to supply arms to the Irish rebels – with some foreshadowings of tragedy, as rebel leaders, from the dedicated socialist James Connolly to the poetically minded Pádraig Pearse, saw that their support was significantly less than expected, but decided to proceed with their efforts anyway.
It all began on 24 April, Easter Monday, in 1916, when the rebels took over the General Post Office in Dublin and raised a green flag adorned with gold letters reading “IRISH REPUBLIC.” Seven leaders of the Rising signed their names to a Proclamation of a Provisional Government for the Irish Republic – a document that I’ve seen copies of in many an Irish bar across the United States and Canada.
Postal customers in the GPO, and other ordinary Dubliners, seem at first to have been more nonplussed than anything else, wondering if the whole thing might be nothing more than a group of lads off on a lark – until the shooting started. From that point, events took on a momentum of their own. The violence, once it had started, intensified, as Irish rebels dug in where they had established themselves, and British forces brought in more and more men and materiel to try to quash the Rising.
Some of the most powerful passages in Coogan’s 1916: The Easter Rising emphasize well the harsh violence of the urban warfare that occurred in Dublin, as when Coogan writes of how,
outside the GPO itself, the principal theatre of death was on a section of the main road between Dublin and Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) lying on either side of Mount Street Bridge….Along this roadway, a group of Volunteers under the command of Captain Michael Malone made of the area what was described subsequently as either ‘Dublin’s Dardanelles’ or an ‘Irish Thermopylae’….[A]long the Mount Street Bridge approaches, a handful of insurgents inflicted some half of all the casualties suffered by the British during that week. The battle site could legitimately be held up as a paradigm of all the slaughter and waste on the Western Front. (pp. 100-01).
The Rising, of course, failed after six days – and readers who are new to the topic may be surprised, upon looking at some of the photos that Coogan includes, to see how much damage was done to the heart of Dublin during the fighting. The rebels surrendered unconditionally, and were taken prisoner. Ordinary Dubliners, many of whom thought that the British Government was doing its best, in the midst of a world war, to move toward eventual implementation of Irish Home Rule, generally denounced the Rising as a stupid, foolish, unnecessary exercise in violence – until the British responded with their own stupid, foolish, and unnecessary exercise in violence, executing 16 of the rebel leaders.
At Kilmainham Jail in Dublin, on my last visit to the Republic of Ireland, I saw the site where James Connolly, badly wounded in the Rising, was tied to a chair so he could be shot by a British firing squad. The impact that this grotesque act had on public opinion, in both Ireland and Great Britain, was considerable. For many, it summed up all that was bad and wrong and thoughtless and cruel from centuries of English or British rule in Ireland.
As Coogan points out, William Butler Yeats’s immortal poem “Easter 1916” conveys quite well the ambiguity of Ireland’s response to the Rising. Yeats asks, with regard to the Rising and its violence, “Was it needless death after all?/For England may keep faith” – a reference to that lingering hope that London would opt for Irish Home Rule, in spite of the opposition of Ulster Protestants. Yet as Yeats makes his way through a roll call of executed leaders of the Rising – “MacDonagh and MacBride/And Connolly and Pearse” – he finds himself concluding that there is something about the Easter Rising that makes it fundamentally different from all those other Irish rebellions against English or British rule:
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
It is for that reason that Coogan writes that “After the Rising, events in Ireland proceeded, like bankruptcy, in two ways: gradually and suddenly. Within a few months, public opinion had swung against London so much that the prisoners became more of an embarrassment in jail than at liberty, and by Christmas many were set free, Michael Collins among them” (p. 151). History records that Collins developed his own tactics for combatting British rule in Ireland, in a manner that proved ultimately more successful than the Rising had been.
An ”Aftermath” chapter recounts some major events of “the Troubles,” the Northern Ireland civil conflict of 1969-98, and then brings the reader forward into the post-Good Friday Agreement era of Ireland’s history. Looking at stubborn political disagreements between the Catholic/nationalist and Protestant/unionist communities in Northern Ireland as of 2001, Coogan notes nationalist fears that the unionists are still seeking “to avoid sharing power with Catholics, reacting toward the Good Friday Agreement as did their ancestors to the Home Rule Bill almost a century ago. The narrative continues” (p. 157).
1916: The Easter Rising is a concise and well-crafted recounting of the “terrible beauty” of a vitally important moment from Ireland’s modern history.
July 11, 2012
I read this book in half a day. Straight to the point and still full of the most valueable information. Tim Pat Coogan does enter some of his opinion, but it is the opinion of the vast amount of people toward this incredibly important event in Irish history. Even the English who are the obvious bad guys here. The most beautiful thing is Mr. Coogan's point that these rebels did not have the backing of popular opinion though men like Pearse (who knew the poetic value) and Connolly (who understand the working class mind) gave their lives, literally, on the gamble that revolution may just lead to Irish freedom. Amazingly it did, despite their lack of organization and bad communication mostly because of the terrible decision by the English Governor General Maxwell to execute the rebels. Therefore turning them from Fenian swine into martyrs for freedom. Great book on a great topic.
EL
EL
February 13, 2014
Good clear description of the rising, lots of pictures which I appreciate. Not engaging literature. I do have a better understanding now of what happened and will look carefully at the buildings involved on my next trip to Dublin. The Irish!! Can't agree about anything!
February 6, 2016
In just over one hundred and seventy pages Tim Pat Coogan's '1916:The Easter Rising' is crammed with historical detail, fully documenting the political machinations of the Home Rule struggle that lead to the actions of 24th April 1916. In this short book the author introduces the many principal players from the Irish freedom movements and from the British governments, and then takes the reader from Easter Monday 1916 all the way through to the Easter April 10th Good Friday Agreement of 1998, with all the Ulster troubles in between.
Naturally, it is the violent events in Dublin and their immediate aftermath that feature prominently in the book. Using many primary sources, official documents and personal testimonies Coogan unfolds the drama of the birth of Republican resistance. Add a pinch of Murphy's Law, a large helping of confusion and chance events. Mix with the usual political bumbling and bring to the boil with men of courage and belief. Simmer for a further eighty years.
Serve cold.
Naturally, it is the violent events in Dublin and their immediate aftermath that feature prominently in the book. Using many primary sources, official documents and personal testimonies Coogan unfolds the drama of the birth of Republican resistance. Add a pinch of Murphy's Law, a large helping of confusion and chance events. Mix with the usual political bumbling and bring to the boil with men of courage and belief. Simmer for a further eighty years.
Serve cold.
April 12, 2020
It is the great duty and burden of the historian to attempt the relating of events in an impartial way. The ideals of oneself and one’s society must never taint the narrative of those who are not around to relate it themselves. Tim Pat Coogan makes a paltry effort at remaining neutral in his retelling of a great wound in Ireland’s history, which can be explained being he is Irish himself. While Coogan does villainize the British and make martyrs of his countrymen, however, he does take great pains to show the atrocities committed by both parties, if only to highlight the lengths the Irish found themselves driven to.
Coogan is an established Irish historian and journalist, who earned distinction for his coverage of The Troubles (an ethno-nationalist conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) and his biographies of two ringleaders in the Easter Rising, Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera. The bias of the material begins make sense with a bit of research, Coogan’s father was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. While this leads to a personal and therefore more intimate telling of the story, it clouds the reader’s perspective with a patriotic sense of outrage.
While engaging, the book was written on the presupposition that the reader would have a prior knowledge of British politics, political parties, and history. Events as far back as William of Orange’s invasion of England in 1688 are referenced as a means to set the political stage. The events leading to Irish independence began centuries before it was won, something that Coogan emphasizes well. The threads of Irish history and tragedy, having long been woven by grieving and tired hands, at last formed a tapestry of revolution which would adorn the exodus of Ireland from Great Britain.
The book references events all the way up to the 1990s, evidencing how the Easter Rising heralded the beginning of The Troubles. While a captivating read, it loses points for its required depth of knowledge that affects its comprehensibility and the blatant bias that does little to offer the reader a rounder understanding of the conflict as a whole. Overall, I’d recommend this book with the caveat that it should supplement a battery of other sources regarding the Irish Easter Rebellion.
Coogan is an established Irish historian and journalist, who earned distinction for his coverage of The Troubles (an ethno-nationalist conflict between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland) and his biographies of two ringleaders in the Easter Rising, Michael Collins and Éamon de Valera. The bias of the material begins make sense with a bit of research, Coogan’s father was a volunteer in the Irish Republican Army. While this leads to a personal and therefore more intimate telling of the story, it clouds the reader’s perspective with a patriotic sense of outrage.
While engaging, the book was written on the presupposition that the reader would have a prior knowledge of British politics, political parties, and history. Events as far back as William of Orange’s invasion of England in 1688 are referenced as a means to set the political stage. The events leading to Irish independence began centuries before it was won, something that Coogan emphasizes well. The threads of Irish history and tragedy, having long been woven by grieving and tired hands, at last formed a tapestry of revolution which would adorn the exodus of Ireland from Great Britain.
The book references events all the way up to the 1990s, evidencing how the Easter Rising heralded the beginning of The Troubles. While a captivating read, it loses points for its required depth of knowledge that affects its comprehensibility and the blatant bias that does little to offer the reader a rounder understanding of the conflict as a whole. Overall, I’d recommend this book with the caveat that it should supplement a battery of other sources regarding the Irish Easter Rebellion.
February 18, 2021
So there's a lot of books about the troubles. This is one of them. Well, that depends on what you think 'the troubles' refers to. Anyway.
This is pretty shamelessly partisan but I struggle to imagine a history of any integrity which doesn't stick the boot in to the British.
It's something like a (short) book-length essay on some of the context around the events. No chapters. I'd say it's probably pitched more at the casual rather than the academic but it's not stupid. Actually it's reminded me that journalism isn't always terrible.
So this isn't a bad book by any means but it's kind of an array of events. It whips along at a fair old lick. It's a good overview of stuff but I guess I'm after historical detail. Academic stuff really. Definitely worth a read for an overview of events - and the sense that the Easter rising was kind of shabby but noble. And some context behind characters like Connely. And that one of the executed was a gay man. And some of the personal anecdotes of people involved. And the fucking British.
Oh also a few generations of Churchills, it transpires, were mendacious beyond measure. Who knew.
Anyway. Yeah worth a squizz.
This is pretty shamelessly partisan but I struggle to imagine a history of any integrity which doesn't stick the boot in to the British.
It's something like a (short) book-length essay on some of the context around the events. No chapters. I'd say it's probably pitched more at the casual rather than the academic but it's not stupid. Actually it's reminded me that journalism isn't always terrible.
So this isn't a bad book by any means but it's kind of an array of events. It whips along at a fair old lick. It's a good overview of stuff but I guess I'm after historical detail. Academic stuff really. Definitely worth a read for an overview of events - and the sense that the Easter rising was kind of shabby but noble. And some context behind characters like Connely. And that one of the executed was a gay man. And some of the personal anecdotes of people involved. And the fucking British.
Oh also a few generations of Churchills, it transpires, were mendacious beyond measure. Who knew.
Anyway. Yeah worth a squizz.
September 9, 2021
The narration in this book is stunning, it seems to be a first hand account. Coogan loves history and you can feel it from the first pages of his book. This is an account, indeed an epic story, of the sacrifice and patriotism of a handful of people who defied the Empire, knowing what awaited each of them. It is a story of hope and a great dream, which thanks to the tribute of blood and heroism became reality. Ireland, apart from being his homeland, is also a great, wonderful and enduring Idea for the author, who expresses his great love for it in every word of this book. This love is highly contagious, and no wonder, since the very fact of the Irish Easter Rising has something of the romantic impulse of the literary classics. What is it about this country that makes people fall in love with it to their hearts' content? Coogan answers that question, in his wonderful book, with respectful language and disenchanting portrayal of the legends of those days.
October 8, 2024
A great introduction to 1916. I knew a bit already but I was never one to pay much attention in history class, so this was a good way to piece everything together.
I thought that while everything was written very well in a very digestible way, it could be hard to piece the narrative together as events are told in rapid fire, without being broken up by chapters or even categorised particularly strongly. There is a loose chronology, but even this sometimes skips ahead or makes reference to something decades (or even centuries) prior.
Despite this, it was manageable to follow the timeline of events.
Reading it on my way to work in Dublin city centre and passing along many of the sites referenced in the book during my morning commute proved to be quite poignant. This subject is essential reading for anyone who calls themself Irish and this book is a great first step into understanding this part of our history.
I thought that while everything was written very well in a very digestible way, it could be hard to piece the narrative together as events are told in rapid fire, without being broken up by chapters or even categorised particularly strongly. There is a loose chronology, but even this sometimes skips ahead or makes reference to something decades (or even centuries) prior.
Despite this, it was manageable to follow the timeline of events.
Reading it on my way to work in Dublin city centre and passing along many of the sites referenced in the book during my morning commute proved to be quite poignant. This subject is essential reading for anyone who calls themself Irish and this book is a great first step into understanding this part of our history.
March 3, 2020
One of the most interesting places we visited when we were in Dublin was Kilmainham Gaol, where many of the leaders of the Irish 1916 Easter Uprising were killed, and the tour guide told their stories in vivid detail. I thought this book might bring out the story more fully for me. The book consists of a short introduction and conclusion and then a 150-page chapter in the middle. The audience for this book may be mainly an Irish one who already know much of the story well. I felt lost for most of the book and add much to my knowledge of the events. It have helped an Irishman understand it better, though.
July 31, 2017
Only really an introduction book to the subject, briefly covers the events leading up to, during and after the rising. It explores the key players and both sides, starts off pretty neutral yet towards the end seems to show sympathy towards the "rebels". Worth a read if you're new to the subject yet there are better more in depth books out there.
January 19, 2020
I had to stop reading this so don’t take my review wholeheartedly but I really struggled with this. The writing is so dry and with no set chapters, it’s basically a 200 page essay with no logical stopping points. Really want to learn more about this history but need to find a book that doesn’t add adjectives for the sake of it...!
January 19, 2023
His writing is vivid, though sometimes it moves with too big of strides. The entire book is an introduction and a single chapter all the way to the end, which I have to deemed as an comfortable read. The writing zooms in on the proceedings of the Rising even until the names of streets where named Sinn Feiners were keeping post were given.
July 9, 2024
As other reviewers have said, it’s an insightful guide to the Rising but it’s terribly structured. With no chapters, it often reads like a long series of individual anecdotes (some more relevant than others), which makes it tough reading at times. This book would have benefitted from being longer and using a thematic or chronological approach
June 24, 2019
I don't read a lot so It shows how good this book was that I read It In a week. The book explains reasons why the Easter rising happened and what influences the leaders had. I know a bit about this period of history but I found myself learning new things.I really enjoyed reading this book.
December 4, 2020
I didn't know anything about the Easter Rising except that it happened in Dublin. This was a decent introduction to its background, its major players, and its aftermath. The only issue I really had was the grammar, but that wouldn't have bothered me if I wasn't a professional book editor!
June 2, 2021
Good introduction to a pivotal part of Ireland’s story. I hadn’t read another book prior to this, and maybe this has influenced my score for this book, but as an introduction I couldn’t have asked for more. An interesting read.
December 28, 2023
This was an interesting enough book around the Irish Uprising in Dublin in 1916. Not much has changed in the rest of the UK in many ways. It was though really hard to read as it consisted of a short intro and aftermath with one giant 180 page chapter in the middle.
December 29, 2024
What is probably an excellent historical account of the Irish Rising with keen insight, a lot of it was lost on me as a newcomer to Irish history and political parties. Not a good read as an introduction to the rising.
May 11, 2025
Written when implementing the GFA was not looking certain and draws comparisons to the situation pre 1916 and circa 2001. A light introduction to a hefty subject where each of the characters deserves a book length biography. Watch "1916 Seachtar na Cásca" first.
July 7, 2017
The author does a good job of reviewing events in Ireland from 1916 to 2008, but does so from a distinctly "left of center" viewpoint.
September 27, 2018
On a visit to Ireland I picked up this book which looked like a brief introduction to this historic event. I was initially put off by the author's introduction which reflected a fairly strident anti unionist and English Conservative view. However, I stuck with it and the main narrative of the book provides an interesting introduction in the lead up to the rebellion and the key players. Use of chapter breaks would have helped punctuate what feels becomes a lengthy discourse but it is a fascinating piece of Irish and British history that leads me to want to know more.
March 14, 2019
coogan is a bit biased, but the writing is good and i understand the rising now, so it served its purpose.
November 6, 2019
“In the event of victory, hold on to your rifles, as those with whom we are fighting may stop before our goal is reached. We are out for economic as well as political liberty” - James Connolly
January 18, 2021
"He said that the first blow had been struck and Ireland would get her freedom but that she'd have to go through hell first." -Tom Clarke
February 23, 2023
Interesting but difficult to read.
August 6, 2023
Interesting. But structured absolutely terribly.
June 21, 2024
It took me 87 years to read this because it’s all over the place and doesn’t even have chapters. Keep the stream of consciousness for Irish fiction!
January 14, 2025
Doesn’t paint my boy Podraic out in a good light
March 30, 2025
😹😹😹😹😹😹😹😹
September 10, 2025
MacDonagh and MacBride
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
-W.B. Yeats
And Connolly and Pearse
Now and in time to be,
Wherever green is worn,
Are changed, changed utterly:
A terrible beauty is born.
-W.B. Yeats
Displaying 1 - 30 of 51 reviews