Charles Stewart Parnell

Charles Stewart Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable. He hated the colour green. He was not a dynamic speaker. He was cold and aloof and lacked the popular touch. 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. Ever since his fall and his premature death in 1891, Parnell has remained a remarkably potent symbol, particularly in times of crisis and conflict in Ireland. The myth has obscured the man and makes it difficult for us to see Parnell as he really was. Paul Bew presents a completely original interpretation of this fascinating and enigmatic man.

A re-issue of F.S.L. Lyons life of Parnell, this is one of the great triumphs of modern Irish biography. "

Parnell is one of the key figures of modern Irish history and also one of the most enigmatic. He was a wealthy Protestant landlord who led a largely Catholic land reform and nationalist movement. This biography attempts to resolve some of the apparent contradictions in Parnell's life and career. Charles Stewart Parnell is not just one of the key figures of modern Irish history: he is also one of the most enigmatic. He was a wealthy, Protestant landlord who led a largely Catholic land reform and nationalist movement. He was an apparently cold, aloof man whose political downfall was precipitated by his passionate love affair with another man's wife. He was not a great orator in a country that loves oratory, yet he dominated its public life as no man has done before or since. In this short biography, Paul Bew tries to resolve some of the apparent contradictions in Parnell's life and career. He argues that Parnell was fundamentally a constitutionalist and that his primary concern was the survival of his own landlord class, safely integrated into a new Ireland. Other books by Paul Bew Northern Ireland Northern Ireland Chronology.

Reproduction of the original.