From Dublin to Dartmoor: A 1916 journey

On the 100th anniversary of Patrick Pearse’s surrender — on the last Saturday of April 1916 — a never-published letter reveals how Irish men in different uniforms found they had a lot in common, writes Niall Murray

From a large family in east Cork, John O’Brien had emigrated to London in the decades before the Rising and worked as a banker in Leyton.

Despite the background of a family active in the Land League, like many Irishmen in England he signed up in 1914 to an Irish regiment.