Radical readers

Reviews Vivid Faces: The revolutionary generation in Ireland, 1890-1923 by Roy Foster, the book explores the social and cultural as well as the political and conspiratorial interactions of some of those who made the Irish Revolution. He focuses on "young, politically interested people in the pre-revolutionary period before moving on to the events of the revolution itself and its subsequent fallout". Radicalised mainly through cultural nationalism, these were people who, for one reason or another, had become convinced that Ireland, bought off by land reform and Edwardian social improvements, had lost not only her native language but her soul. Foster examines how the survivors later looked back on the revolution to which they contributed, and how they decided whether the insurrectionary game, with its deaths, disasters and divisions, had been worth it. The book succeeds admirably in its exploration of intersecting radical groups and impulses in Dublin, where they left personal papers, or are recorded in other people's correspondence and diaries. The book represents not the completion, but an impressive and stylish beginning of the systematic exploration of Irish revolution mentalities, expectations and disappointments. (Quotes from original text)