John Redmond. Dermot Meleady

John Redmond - Dermot Meleady

Irish nationalist leader John Redmond left no diaries or memoirs, but was a prolific letter-writer. In John Redmond: Selected Letters and Memoranda, 1880–1918, Dermot Meleady skilfully edits Redmond’s correspondence to offer new and first-hand perspectives on key moments in Ireland’s history via the many-faceted postbag of one of its most able political figures. Spanning four decades, these letters to and from key figures such as John Dillon, William O’Brien, David Lloyd George and Herbert Asquith trace Parnell’s downfall, the reunification of the Irish Parliamentary Party, Irish participation in the First World War and the destruction of Redmond’s lifelong dream of Home Rule in the aftermath of the Easter 1916 rebellion. Redmond’s untimely death in 1918, after a wave of shocks and disappointments, marked a sadly premature end to an immense personality as well as the end of an era, but this book brings to life many of the episodes of the vibrant politics of his period. Above all, it gives Redmond back his own voice, allowing him to speak directly to us from a century ago and to correct some of the caricature to which he has sometimes been reduced in the popular memory and academic discourse.