Birth of a Nation
Ronan Fanning & Charles Townshend in conversation with John Borgonovo. Ronan Fanning’s Fatal Path; British Government and Irish Revolution, 1910-1922 is a magisterial narrative of the most turbulent decade in Anglo-Irish history. It was a time when violence and the threat of violence trumped democratic politics and, argues Fanning, it worked, however much this view offends our contemporary moral sensibilities. Charles Townshend’s The Republic; The Fight for Irish Independence, 1918-1923 dovetails perfectly with Fanning’s book, taking us from the War of Independence through the Civil War and shows how the betrayals and grim compromises put the new nation into a state of trauma for at least a generation. Thus was the new republic born.
John Borgonovo is a history lecturer in University College Cork.
Recorded at Dublin Castle, Printworks venue on 26th September 2013.