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Bezig met laden... Michael Collins and the Women who Spied for Irelanddoor Meda Ryan
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Michael Collins and the Women Who Spied for Irelandis the first book to concentrate on the crucial role played by women in Collins's personal and working life. From his boyhood in an overwhelmingly female household in West Cork, women brought out the best in him and he brought out the best in them. Susan Killeen, his first girlfriend, remained a steadfast ally throughout his life. From 1917, his girlfriend, Madeline (Dilly) Dicker, helped to ease the burden of his huge workload as well as acting as a secret agent. Society ladies Moya Llewelyn Davies and Lady Hazel Lavery were conduits between Collins and the British Establishment and active participants in his work of espionage. In the final years of his life the true romantic passion between him and Kitty Kiernan is testified to by their frequent correspondence.These women, and many others who participated in the national struggle, women such as Kathleen Clarke, Leslie Price, Peg Barrett, Nancy O'Brien, Madge Hales and Collins' sister Mary Collins Powell, are woven into this fascinating narrative of Collins' life. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)941History and Geography Europe British IslesLC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde: Geen beoordelingen.Ben jij dit?Word een LibraryThing Auteur. |
Meda Ryan is a scrupulous historian who, unlike the 'revisionists', makes no claims that she cannot document and substantiate. Her biographies of Tom Barry and Liam Lynch are musts for anyone reading this period.
This book enhances her stature. Sadly, in the early years, a lot of women who played crucial roles in the struggle for Irish independence seemed to have been ignored. Here is a necessary corrective to that neglect in which portraits of many of these women are woven into a fascinating new look at the life and role of Michael Collins.
But not only is this document history, but it reads with the ease of a first class thriller. And here is history as seen from the viewpoint of the neglected 'other half of the human race' for whose rights another Cork woman, Anna Wheeler, argued in 1825. There is much to learn from it.
One thing impressed me before I even began to read it and that was the poignant reminder of something Alice Stopford Green wrote on march 11, 1904, in the Westminster Gazette: "We do not want in Ireland the absence of history, we do want a larger study of its truth."
It reminds us that we must challenge those who still work today seeking to distort or consign Irish history to oblivion and assert the 'joys of the old empire'. Dr Meda Ryan is one such voice who diligently seeks the truth.