Drawing on the life of Daniel O’Connell
IN this centenary of commemoration, which has seen all the great men and women of 1916 occupy the box seats of our historical consciousness, it’s easy to lose sight of the events and personalities and the role they played in shaping the times that were to follow. The arrival of a new biography of Daniel O’Connell, the Great Liberator who did so much to advance the rights of Irish Catholics in the early half of the 19th century, is therefore not only timely, but for those suffering history fatigue it offers an accessible read of a life rich with incident.
Subtitled A Graphic Life, the biography is the debut book of freelance journalist Jody Moylan. It was while attending a series of lectures delivered by O’Connell’s modern biographer Patrick Geoghegan at Trinity College Dublin that the idea of a book came to life in Moylan’s head.
