History: The Irishmen who fought in the Great War were largely forgotten in the years following independence. Except for the poignant lists of names inscribed on the walls of schools, sporting clubs and places of worship - predominantly those of Protestants - the country suffered a collective act of amnesia or, as FX Martin described it, the "Great Oblivion".
Until the beginning of the Troubles in the North muddied the waters, the heroes were those who came out in Easter Week 1916, while those who heeded John Redmond's call at Woodenbridge in 1914 and were slaughtered at the Somme later the same year were something of an embarrassment, skeletons to be kept buried in the cupboard.
Redmond's younger brother, Willie, who enlisted in the Royal Irish Regiment in his mid-50s, was one of those who believed in Home Rule. He was a nationalist MP like John but believed in his wider patriotic duty and died at Messines in June 1917. He was one of 25 members of the Irish Bar who lost their lives in the war and who are commemorated on a memorial in the Four Courts and are now the subject of this scholarly book.
Anthony P Quinn's study of the Irish barristers who died in the war is a fine piece of research but also a wider reminder of the complex and diverse motivations that led many Irish men to their deaths on the European and Turkish battlefields. Of those who died, 14 were members of the Church of Ireland, eight were Roman Catholic, two were Presbyterian and one was a Methodist.
Reflecting the divided loyalties within some families was Gerald Plunkett, a Roman Catholic, educated at Belvedere College and Oxford, before training at the King's Inns and being called to the Bar, who was shot in the head at Gallipoli as "laughing and joking he gallantly led his men towards the Turkish trenches".
The first wife of his father, Patrick, was the mother of the papal count George Plunkett, making Gerald and George half brothers. Count George Plunkett's son, Joseph Mary, was executed for his part in the Rising. Whereas Joseph Mary Plunkett became a nationalist icon, Quinn argues it is "difficult to excuse or explain the neglect of Gerald Plunkett in Irish consciousness".
Another Roman Catholic barrister, Tom Kettle, the Irish Parliamentary Party MP for East Tyrone, was critical of the Easter Rising but called for an amnesty for the prisoners. A lieutenant in the Royal Dublin Fusiliers, he was killed later that year during the Battle of the Somme. His brother-in-law, Francis Sheehy Skeffington, a pacifist who opposed recruitment to the army, was murdered in what was then Portobello Barracks during the period of the Rising.
From a prominent southern Church of Ireland and staunchly Unionist family, Arthur Samuels, before studying at the King's Inns, attended Trinity College. As treasurer of the Hist, the college debating society, he seconded a motion to grant money towards a memorial to Wolfe Tone, a former auditor of the society and one of the heroes in the Republican pantheon. Samuels trained with the Dublin University Officer Training Corps and was subsequently appointed to the 11th battalion, Royal Irish Rifles, which had been formed from the South Antrim Rifles, part of Carson's Ulster Volunteer Force. He died in September 1916 of wounds he received at Messines.
The outdated ideas of honour and glory - or the "degraded vestiges of European chivalry" as Anthony Cronin put it in an Irish Times article published 60 years after the Somme - that undoubtedly led men to their deaths many will now find unpalatable.
Against the background of the State's commemoration last weekend of the 90th anniversary of the 1916 Rising with a military parade through the streets of Dublin, Quinn's elegant book is a timely call to remembrance of all Irishmen - unionist and nationalist - who died in 1916, believing they were doing the best for their country.
Tim Fanning is a freelance journalist
Wigs and Guns: Irish Barristers in the Great War By Anthony P Quinn Four Courts Press, 208pp. €45