"Like Prometheus, Collins stole fire. Like Prometheus, he paid for his feat and much of what he set about doing remains undone. But his name burns brightly wherever the Irish meet. Michael Collins was the man who made Ireland possible." So begins Tim Pat Coogan in this highly-acclaimed biography that sat atop the best-seller lists of England and Ireland, and is now published in the U.S. for the first time. Michael Collins, affectionately known as "The Big Fellow" was
Just thirty-one years of age when on the morning of October 11, 1921, he sat down to negotiate Irish independence with one of the most formidable political teams that England ever assembled. Facing him were David Lloyd George, Lord Birkenhead, Austin Chamberlain, and Winston Churchill. The ensuing treaty of December 6 did not yield the unbroken island nation Collins had hoped for, but he prophetically termed it a "stepping stone" to today's Irish Republic. But, Coogan
Asserts, "all the other stepping stones to the tragedy of today's Northern Ireland situation were part of that negotiation too. In a very real sense Collins' premature death was caused by the forces that still rage about the North-eastern corner of the land." Before his remarkable debut in international diplomacy, Michael Collins had been rightly celebrated as the brains and driving force behind a daring strategy of guerilla warfare. It was Collins who founded the Irish
Army and became its first Commander in-Chief, who ingeniously smashed the British Army's intelligence network in Dublin and who became known as "the man they couldn't catch." The Man Who Made Ireland takes in the full sweep of Irish history as it was lived by all the major protagonists of Collins' lifetime until his assassination in 1922, towards the end of the Irish Civil War. If we hope to understand today's tragedies, and avert others like them, it is essential to
Know and learn from the story of Michael Collins.
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