This is no value-free history, to paraphrase Donnchadh O Corrain, the UCC historian: the author is engage in the best sense - and it works. O'Connor's great-grandfather was the able Matt Harris, who became MP for East Galway in 1880. The previous January he was present at the seminal IRB meeting in Paris at which Michael Davitt and John Devoy launched the New Departure - uniting the physical force movement, the Land League and the Irish Parliamentary Party. It's not difficult to imagine the IRB man who died in 1891, 30 years before Ireland became independent, peering over his direct descendant's shoulder as he struggles to explain the character quirks and motivations of the Irish leaders in the War of Independence. O'Connor's enormous empathy with these figures - Collins himself, of course, but also Mulcahy, McKee, de Valera, Brugha and Griffith - does not lessen their impact on the general reader.