…must be the definitive biography…politics was [Redmond’s] life, and Melady’s immersion in the huge Redmond archive enables him to show a subtler and more analytical approach to the real matters at issue… –Roy Foster, Irish Times *** The coming of the first world war…threw Ireland into violence and confusion, and Redmond and his party into political and historical oblivion. Meleady rescues him. Superbly detailed, clearly written and judicious and sober in its approach, this is a book that deserves to be widely read. –Terance Denman, author of ‘A Lonely Grave: The Life and Death of William Redmond ***** Published to coincide with the centenary of the Government of Ireland Act 1914, this majesterial biography of John Redmond begins in 1901, shortly after his election as chairman of the Irish Parliamentary Party in the Westminster Parliament. The book details Redmond’s reconstruction of the Party following its reunification after the destructive decade-long Parnell split, and its re-fashioning as a political weapon for winning Irish Home Rule. The book follows Redmond’s role in successfully passing the Conservatives’ 1903 Land Purchase Act that greatly accelerated the transfer of land ownership from Irish landlords to farmers. His successes and failures in the years of the 1906-1910 Liberal Government are also fully documented. But, when the Liberals’ moved in 1911 to remove the House of Lords’ veto, the stage was set for the passage of the third Home Rule Bill, the paramount goal of Redmond’s endeavors. The events of the following turbulent five years - the increasingly militant resistance of Ulster Unionism to Home Rule, the outbreak of World War I, and the unforeseen Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 (as much a blow against Home Rule as against British rule) cast Redmond down from triumphant prime-minister-in-waiting to the status of Ireland’s lost leader. First vilified, then forgotten, this is the story of one of the most tragic figures in 20th-century Irish political history. [Subject: Biography, Irish Studies, British Studies, Politics, History]
