The Diaries of Michael Collins with Anne Dolan, PhD & William Murphy, PhD

WHERE: Register on Zoom now or watch live on Youtube.

WHEN: November 15, 2022 from 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM

From 1918 to 1922 Michael Collins kept working diaries of his busy revolutionary life. They are a collection of hurried notes, necessary lists, names and appointments, things to do, and things not done. They are a record of his long working days, and they got him to where he needed to be on time. Though these diaries do not contain conventional lengthy entries in which Collins finally reveals his innermost thoughts, they still tell us much about this extraordinary man.
In this book, Michael Collins’s biographers, Anne Dolan and William Murphy, capture the nature of this new Collins source. They reflect on how the diaries change what we know about him, and challenge us to think differently about his life. The diaries begin with Collins a revolutionary among many; they end in 1922 with Collins as the most powerful figure in Ireland. They begin with Collins a single man; they end with him about to be married. The authors present thematic reflections on what the diaries reveal of his transformed life.
Anne Dolan is an associated professor of modern Irish history at Trinity College Dublin. Her publications include Commemorating the Irish Civil War: History and Memory 1923-2000 (Cambridge, 2003). She is joint editor of ‘No Surrender Here!’ The Civil War Papers of Ernie O’Malley (Dublin, 2007). She co-wrote Michael Collins: The Man and The Revolution (Cork, 2018) with William Murphy.
William Murphy is an associate professor in modern Irish history at Dublin City University. He is author of Political Imprisonment and the Irish, 1912-1921 (Oxford, 2014). He co-edited The Gaelic Athletic Association, 1884-2009 (Dublin, 2009) and Leisure and the Irish in the Nineteenth Century (Liverpool, 2016).