By any measure, Cathal Brugha’s life was extraordinary:

A celebrated survivor of the 1916 Rising, despite multiple gunshot wounds; a crucial figure in the post-Rising reorganisation of the Volunteers and Sinn Féin; speaker at the first sitting of Dáil Éireann and president pro tempore; minister for defence in the underground government during the War of Independence; passionate and acerbic opponent of the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1921; a reluctant participant in the Irish civil war, having tried to prevent it; and that conflict’s first high profile fatality in July 1922.

Daithí Ó Corráin is assistant professor in the School of History and Geography, Dublin City University. He is co-author, with Gerard Hanley, of a new biography of Cathal Brugha.