Leslie Mitchell

He Loathed the Colour Green

Enigma: A New Life of Charles Stewart Parnell

By

Gill & Macmillan 256pp £21.99 order from our bookshop

In the pantheon of Irish patriots, there are many men who can only be described as odd. To call them outsiders is merely charitable. Such men turn their backs on their caste or their religion or both. They invite charges of betrayal and their motives are inscrutable. None was odder than Charles Stewart Parnell. Paul Bew has chosen an appropriate title for his deeply researched biography, for few claimed to know the man. In fact he never ‘had a single intimate friend’.

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