The 1916 Diaries of an Irish Rebel and a British Soldier - Mick O’Farrell

Everyone knows the story of Easter Week 1916 but what was it like to be under fire in one of those buildings, and what was it like for the British soldiers suddenly facing men they thought were their allies in a much larger war?.

This book contains the unpublished diaries of two men writing under fire on the streets of Dublin in April 1916. In Jacob’s factory, Volunteer Seosamh de Brún wrote in his tiny diary about guard duties and a bicycle sortie to help de Valera, during which a sniper killed one of the cyclists. Meanwhile, across the Liffey, British soldier Samuel Lomas wrote in his own diary of building barricades across Moore Street and participating in the executions of Pearse, Clarke and MacDonagh, giving new insights into the rebellion’s grim closing days. Mick O'Farrell brilliantly juxtaposes these two accounts, including fascimilies that show through deteriorating handwriting the increasing pressure the diarists were under, to give a dramatic account of how ordinary participants experienced the events of Easter week, events that would change the course of history in both Ireland and England.