Michael Collins: The Man and the Revolution

by Anne Dolan, William Murphy

'It was the most providential escape yet. It will probably have the effect of making them think that I am even more mysterious than they believe me to be, and that is saying a good deal.' 

Michael Collins knew the power of his persona, and capitalised on what people wanted to believe. The image we have of him comes filtered through a sensational lens, exaggerated out of all proportion. We see what we have come to 'the man who won the war', the centre of a web of intelligence that 'brought the British Empire to its knees'. He comes to us as a mixture of truth and lies, propaganda and misunderstanding. The willingness to see him as the sum of the Irish revolution, and in turn reduce him to a caricature of his many parts, clouds our view of both the man and the revolution.

Drawing on archives in Ireland, Britain and the United States, the authors question our traditional assumptions about Collins. Was he the man of his age, or was he just luckier, more brazen, more written about and more photographed than the rest? Despite the pictures of him in uniform during the last weeks of his life, Collins saw very little of the actual fight. He was chiefly an organiser and a strategist. Should we remember him as a master of the mundane rather than the romantic figure of the blockbuster film? The eight thematic, highly illustrated chapters scrutinise different aspects of Collins' origins, work, war, politics, celebrity, beliefs, death and afterlives. Approaching him through the eyes of contemporaries and historians, friends and enemies, this provocative book reveals new insights, challenging what we think we know about him and, in turn, what we think we know about the Irish revolution.

Genres: History, Ireland, Nonfiction

482 pages, Kindle Edition

Published October 5, 2018

Reviews

[Adriana Moura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Before I read this book I had some contact with its content, so I wasn't really expecting much when I finally read it. My conclusion about the book was not a surprise.
I will start with the positive points. The book is richly illustrated, with some very interesting images, though the captions are not always careful and at times either misidentify or make no effort to identify what is going on. The wealth of sources was a delight for a person who is studying about Michael Collins, though, again, the excess of quotes from the polemic Peter Hart can only be explained because the authors are from Trinity College.
The book has two authors, and it is very clear all along that some chapters were written by one and some by the other, which damages the book's unity. Not only the writing styles are distinctive, but they seem to work with different agendas. One author is clearly more knowledgeable, but also more impartial, resorting less to Peter Hart and being more critical of his work. The other author brought me to the brink of despair at times, when listing facts that point to one side, and then coming to the exact opposite conclusion. It is evident that this author wants to make a point of wrecking the image of Collins by presenting him as a non-entity, someone who really did nothing good, treating the reader like an empty-minded person, unable to come to their own conclusions from the evidence presented and thus pliable to the predetermined invectives. It is infuriating.
It goes worse: the dialogue between the authors seems to be so scarce that at some points the same facts base a certain conclusion in one chapter and the opposite conclusion on the next.
I only wished that author #1 could write another book with the same material, this time alone.

[Molly Parsons-O'Connor · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was recently a plaque but above a very bougie furniture shop in my neighbourhood, noting it as the site where Michael Collins was inducted into the Irish Republican Brotherhood in 1909. For those who didn't come up through the Irish education system, Michael Collins may not be a familiar figure to you but he looms large in the national imagination. A key figure in the Irish fight for independence from Britain, Collins was a solider, a spymaster, a politician and a negotiator prior to his assassination at the age of 31 in the midst of the Irish Civil War. Seeing this little green sign pop up brought years of school history lessons rushing back and I was inspired to seek out a biography of the man, rather than just the myth and the legend. Dolan and Murphy's comprehensive biography explicitly tries to address the power of Collins' persona and brings together contemporary accounts of friends and enemies of Collins to demystify the character and qualities of the man he really was, rather than who he wanted to be perceived as. Eschewing a typical biographical approach, the book is arranged thematically rather than chronologically, with chapters focusing on Collins' attitudes to work, war, politics and celebrity itself. If you're looking for a good starting point to learn more about the Irish War of Independence and the Civil War, this book will likely be too advanced for you as it assumes a lot of existing knowledge of Irish history. However, if you're already familiar with these topics and looking to dive deeper, this is a great book to pick up

[James Naughton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book an exceptionally well-balanced, fair accounting of Mr. Michael Collins’s life. Perhaps, the most important project this piece of scholarship undertakes is questioning why Mr. Collins was lionized in his time and ours. A good compliment to Tim Pat Coogan’s novel on Mr. Collins.

[Brian Mulholland · Rating 1 out of 5]

Mean spirited book. If you want to learn about Collins go read a different book. Pity as it’s a beautiful book and amazing photos. Disappointing.