Standing at the epicentre of Ireland's revolution, the hugely infl uential Sinn Féiner, Gaelic Leaguer and Irish Republican Brotherhood (IRB) man, P. S. O'Hegarty (1879–1955), played a major part in early twentieth-century Ireland's separatist movement, from its earliest days through to its culmination. Using O'Hegarty's prodigious journalism, personal correspondences and published works, this book discusses the major political and cultural concerns in the decisive decades leading up to Irish independence in 1921.

Conventional views of O'Hegarty see him as an uncritical exponent of Irish nationalism, a good example being Peter Gibbon's infl uential study, The Origins of Ulster Unionism. This viewed O'Hegarty as typical of ‘Catholic particularism’, and as representative of the worst fears held by Ireland's unionist (mostly Protestant) minority, i.e., that any inevitably overwhelmingly (mostly Catholic) nationalist majority government would lead to their unavoidable political and religious sidelining. Yet, as this book argues, O'Hegarty kept an independent and searching mind throughout his separatist career, remaining a critical observer of Irish Republicanism, on which he provides much original thinking.