There is a wide time span in this book, which takes up the threads of history shortly after the death of Parnell, and ends with a brief epilogue covering the Civil War and the birth of the Free State. If it can be said to have a hero, that figure is Michael Collins, which is wholly fitting since he was the architect and organiser of the guerrilla campaign and only he could have broken up the intelligence ding on which the British military machine depended. There are pen portraits of Pearse and the other 1916 leaders, and impressionist pictures of the Literary Revival, but the core of the narrative is inevitably about violence and counter violence, including Bloody Sunday (incidentally, in view of the current controversy in the letters page of this paper, O'Connor is definite that a machine gun was used on the crowd in Croke Park). Well illustrated.