IRISH ASSASSINS

Ireland, 1879-1882. After 700 years of British rule, the post-Famine generation of Irish tenant farmers began to push back against the reigning feudal system of land ownership. The charismatic political leader Charles Stewart Parnell headed up the Land League, a revolutionary movement that promised to restore land and power to the people through a series of protests, strikes and boycotts. After what became known as the Irish Land War had escalated into nationwide anarchy, Parnell and two associates were thrown into prison without trial in Kilmainham Gaol. In April 1882, Parnell secretly forged the Kilmainham Treaty, a pact in which he pledged to work diplomatically with British Prime Minister William Gladstone for peace and eventual independence of Ireland from England. It was a moment of real hope and potential turning point in history, yet it would be shattered one sunlit evening on May 6th 1882, as Gladstone's emissary Lord Frederick Cavendish, who had arrived that day in Dublin, and Thomas Burke, the Under Secretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence, and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially made surgeons' blades. The impact of the assassinations was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the peace pact, almost brought down the government, and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the 20th century. The story spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris and New York, Cannes and Cape Town and Julie Kavanagh traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From Parnell's passionate affair with the Irish MPs wife Katherine 'Kitty' O'Shea, which eventually caused his downfall, to Queen Victoria's prurient obsession with the assassinations, from the investigation by the 'Irish Sherlock Holmes' who tirelessly tracked down each member of the Invincibles, to the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas, the book is compulsively readable. 473pp, paperback, 16 pages of photos.