A requiem for fallen heroes
GAVIN Friday is online buying a gold coin issued by the Central Bank to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Michael Collins’s death. “They’re a memento,” he says. “Part of history.”
Friday is a collector — “you’d get a fright walking into my house” — but he has been enamoured of the image of Collins for some time. By dying young, the ‘Big Fella’ became a symbol of lost potential, the free Ireland that might have been, rather than the dull, timid and religious backwater it became. Collins became a blank slate for generations of artists and politicians: those who demonised him; those who, like Fine Gael ministers at Béal na Blá commemorations, present him as a thwarted moderniser; and those, like Neil Jordan, who portray him as a flawless hero.
