Enigma
A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell
Published on 21. October 2011
Book
Hardback
272 pages
978-0-7171-4744-1 (ISBN)
Description
Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished and long-established Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable. None the less, from the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland-previously a taboo subject in British politics-at the centre of Westminster affairs and effectively created the modern Irish state in embryo.
His fall was as dramatic as his rise. The affair with Mrs Katharine O'Shea, the mother of his three children, destroyed him. Paul Bew reinterprets this enigmatic man as one who was fundamentally conservative, who wished to reconcile his own landlord class to a new Ireland, and who acknowledged and accelerated the political demands of nationalist Ireland.
His fall was as dramatic as his rise. The affair with Mrs Katharine O'Shea, the mother of his three children, destroyed him. Paul Bew reinterprets this enigmatic man as one who was fundamentally conservative, who wished to reconcile his own landlord class to a new Ireland, and who acknowledged and accelerated the political demands of nationalist Ireland.
Reviews / Votes
"Perhaps the most striking feature of Professor Paul Bew's book is how much is packed into so little space...his trick is not to dwell on the nuances of Parnell's upbringing...but to examine forensically every dramatic episode of the epic life"Michael Foley, The Sunday Times
'A significant new assessment of Charles Stewart Parnell and his place in the politics of his period which is at once a masterpiece of compression and of clarity of expression.'
Maurice Hayes, Irish Independent
'A riveting portrait ... "astonishing" scarcely does justice to the political achievements of the deeply strange, even dysfunctional man at the heart of Bew's book ... How are we to reconcile the sleep-walking, paranoid inadequate who obsessed about the colour green and the number 13, with the parliamentary titan who came to terrify the Speaker of the Commons with his deadly procedural prowess by 1880?'
John-Paul McCarthy, The Spectator
'Bew's magnificent study leaves a deepened appreciation of the force of Joyce's characterisation of Parnell as an Irish leader who was "strong to the verge of weakness".'
Frank Callanan, The Sunday Independent
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Dublin
Ireland
Publishing group
Gill
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Weight
609 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-7171-4744-1 (9780717147441)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
10/2011
Gill Books
€5.99
Available for download
Person
Paul Bew is Professor of Political Science at Queen's University, Belfast and one of the most distinguished historians of modern Ireland. His most recent book is Ireland: The Politics of Enmity 1789-2006.