Royal Irish Academy Knihy

From 1918 to 1922 Michael Collins kept working diaries of his busy revolutionary life. They are a collection of hurried notes, necessary lists, names and appointments, things to do, and things not done. They are a record of his long working days, and they got him to where he needed to be on time. Though these diaries do not contain conventional lengthy entries in which Collins finally reveals his innermost thoughts, they still tell us much about this extraordinary man. In this book, Michael Collins’s biographers, Anne Dolan and William Murphy, capture the nature of this new Collins source. They reflect on how the diaries change what we know about him, and challenge us to think differently about his life. The diaries begin with Collins a revolutionary among many; they end in 1922 with Collins as the most powerful figure in Ireland. They begin with Collins a single man; they end with him about to be married. The authors present thematic reflections on what the diaries reveal of his transformed life. As they are also the diaries of his everyday life, the book examines very particular episodes, the curious and ordinary entries, which allow us to see Collins from new angles. Rather than offering the final piece that will solve the Collins puzzle, the diaries pose new questions to be asked.

The Anglo-Irish Treaty was signed on 6 December 1921. The Treaty led to the creation of an independent Irish state, but also a devastating Civil War that defined Irish politics for decades. Divisive as it proved to be, the signing of the Treaty one of the most important milestones in modern Irish history. The original Irish copy of the Treaty is perhaps the most famous document in modern Irish history and is retained in the collections of the National Archives in Dublin, which marked the centenary of its signing with the landmark exhibition The Treaty, 1921: Records from the Archives. This lavishly illustrated book, based on the original exhibition, explores the negotiation and signing of the Treaty by the Irish delegation that travelled to London in October 1921, and their day-to-day experience of life in London as the negotiations moved towards their conclusion. It does so through the documentary record that they left behind, much of it retained by the National Archives in Dublin and other archives in Ireland.