This is yet another well-researched, excellently put-together book by Joseph EA Connell jnr, who, although based in Florida, has written a lot about the 1916-22 period. This effort considers Michael Collins in the context of the geography of Dublin – area by area, street by street and sometimes even house by house – where Collins worked and lived from 1916 until his death, in Cork, in 1922. What is now Dublin 2 has well over 100 addresses listed, together with the corresponding vignettes. Addresses outside of Dublin and in London are also included. This is, effectively, a reference book about Collins’s intelligence war – and one that may be opened at any page with great profit. Even historians will relish this superbly written account of Ireland’s lost leader. Among its treats are excerpts of Collins’s speeches during the treaty debates in Dáil Éireann. They ring with common and political sense, even a century later.
