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2016 Press Releases

Phenomenal response to 1916 initiatives

11 Feb 2016
The 1916 Irish Rebellion includes a historical narrative, a lavish spread of contemporary images and photographs, and a rich selection of eyewitness accounts.

Cork University Press has published The 1916 Irish Rebellion, the companion book to RTE’s three-part documentary series 1916, the first episode of which proved a huge hit with critics. 

The next two episodes of 1916, narrated by Liam Neeson, will be broadcast on February 17 and 24, and its related 70-minute version will be live-streamed on March 16 to Irish embassies and consulates around the world in an effort to reach the 70 million people of the Irish diaspora.

Both the documentary – produced by COCO Television, broadcast on RTÉ and sold to 120 television stations in the US and the BBC – and the 384-page book, featuring a foreword by Mary McAleese, are initiatives of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame.

The Institute is aiming to broaden public understanding of the historical interconnections between Britain, Ireland, and the United States, connections that continued to have significance up to and including the recent peace process in Northern Ireland.

Professor Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, the Thomas J. & Kathleen M. O’Donnell Professor of Irish Studies and concurrent professor of Film, Television, and Theatre at the University of Notre Dame, is author of the publication as well as originator, writer and producer of the documentary series.

Nic Dhiarmada seized the occasion of the centenary of the Irish Rising to reassess this event and its historical significance in this book, which explores the crucial role of Irish Americans in both the lead-up to and the aftermath of the events in Dublin and places the Irish Rising in its European and global context, as an expression of the anti-colonialism that found its full voice in the wake of the First World War.

The 1916 Irish Rebellion includes a historical narrative, a lavish spread of contemporary images and photographs, and a rich selection of sidebar quotations from contemporary documents, prisoners’ statements, and other eyewitness accounts to capture the experiences of nationalists and unionists, Irish rebels and British soldiers, and Irish Americans during the turbulent events of Easter Week, 1916.

Nic Dhiarmada suggests that the Irish Rising, its ideals, and the subsequent election of members of the nationalist movement to prominent government offices were instrumental to the later creation of the sovereign Republic of Ireland, as well as an inspiration to anti-colonialist insurrections elsewhere in the world.

The 1916 Irish Rebellion will be launched by Declan Kiberd, Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English and Irish Language and Literature, University of Notre Dame at O’Connell House, 58 Merrion Square, Dublin 2 next Thursday, February 18, at 6pm.

Read an exclusive extract from the book, available to buy online.

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