Frank McLynn
Whose Ireland
Robert Emmet: The Making of a Legend
By Marianne Elliott
Profile 292pp £20
ROBERT EMMET IS probably the most famous of all Irish nationalist martyrs. A United Irishman, who to some extent followed in the footsteps of Wolfe Tone, and similarly encouraged Napoleon to invade Ireland, he hatched an ill-conceived plot to seize Dublin Castle and take the viceroy prisoner as soon as a French invasion force landed. In 1798 the French arrived after the native insurrection had already failed, but in 1803 they went one better and did not come at all. Forced into premature, 'spontaneous' rebellion, Emmet and his followers failed lamentably to set Dublin alight, even though they took the authorities by surprise, and Emmet fled to the Wicklow Mountains. Foolishly returning for a clandestine tryst with Sarah Curran, daughter of the lawyer-orator John Curran, Emmet was arrested, tried and hanged at the age of twenty-five. He thus became an archetypal figure in Irish hstory and legend, linking the tragic early deaths of the mythcal hero Cu Chulainn, the later executed Fenians, the rebels of Easter 1916, and the more recent hungerstrike victims like Bobby Sands. Not surprisingly, he is a hero to Irish Republicans and indeed all Irish Catholics who loathe and despise what England has done to its neighbouring island over more than eight hundred years.
Scarcely less surprisingly, Emmet is an object of suspicion and alike or, at the very least, iconoclasm for the Ulster Unionists and their fellow-travellers, the academic revisionists in Irish history. Marianne Elliott is in this tradition and she quotes at length the alternative view of Emmet expressed by the playwright
Sign Up to our newsletter
Receive free articles, highlights from the archive, news, details of prizes, and much more.@Lit_Review
Follow Literary Review on Twitter
Twitter Feed
Knowledge of Sufism increased markedly with the publication in 1964 of The Sufis, by Idries Shah. Nowadays his writings, much like his father’s, are dismissed for their Orientalism and inaccuracy.
@fitzmorrissey investigates who the Shahs really were.
Fitzroy Morrissey - Sufism Goes West
Fitzroy Morrissey: Sufism Goes West - Empire’s Son, Empire’s Orphan: The Fantastical Lives of Ikbal and Idries Shah by Nile Green
literaryreview.co.uk
Rats have plagued cities for centuries. But in Baltimore, researchers alighted on one surprising solution to the problem of rat infestation: more rats.
@WillWiles looks at what lessons can be learned from rat ecosystems – for both rats and humans.
Will Wiles - Puss Gets the Boot
Will Wiles: Puss Gets the Boot - Rat City: Overcrowding and Urban Derangement in the Rodent Universes of John B ...
literaryreview.co.uk
Twisters features destructive tempests and blockbuster action sequences.
@JonathanRomney asks what the real danger is in Lee Isaac Chung's disaster movie.
https://literaryreview.co.uk/eyes-of-the-storm