Drama of the Rising Captured in Exclusive Extract from 'The 1916 Irish Rebellion

10 Feb 2016

The companion volume to the RTÉ documentary The 1916 Irish Rebellion is published today by Cork University Press

The 1916 Irish Rebellion with a foreword by Mary McAleese is the companion book to the RTE three-part documentary series to be broadcast on February 10th, 17th and 24th. Both The 1916 Irish Rebellion book and the related documentary are part of the Keough-Naughton Institute’s aim 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.

Documentary writer, producer, and scholar Bríona Nic Dhiarmada has seized the occasion of the centenary of the Irish Rising to reassess this event and its historical significance. Her book 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.

The documentary, which is narrated by Liam Neeson, and its related seventy-minute version, which will be live-streamed on March 16th event to Irish embassies and consulates around the world in an effort to reach the 70 million people of the Irish diaspora, are initiatives of the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame. The series was produced by COCO Television and will broadcast on RTÉ and American Public Television.

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 anticolonialist insurrections elsewhere in the world.

The 1916 Irish Rebellion will be launched by Declan Kiberd who is Donald and Marilyn Keough Professor of Irish Studies and Professor of English and Irish Language and Literature, University of Notre Dame at 6 pm O’Connell House,58 Merrion Square, Dublin 2, Thursday 18th February 2016.

Bríona Nic Dhiarmada is 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. Professor Nic Dhiarmada is originator, writer, and producer of the multipart documentary series on the Easter Rising of 1916.

For more information about The 1916 Irish Rebellion visit: www.corkuniversitypress.com