“... that broke out in 1919, as later nationalist piety would insist. It is startling to read, in Charles Townshend’s fine study, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) leader, John O’Leary who, in Yeats’s poem, shared his grave with the corpse of ‘romantic Ireland’, observing that the ...”

“... meant for mankind. Though fraught with all learning, yet straining his throat To persuade Tommy Townshend to lend him a vote. More off-putting still is the thought that the arguments in defence of party might be deployed in the service of any party. Even Bromwich seems to lose his cool for a moment when he declares that ‘no serious historian today would ...”