Tom Dunne

Provides a necessary reminder that Wolfe Tone was not the towering figure that later generations have made of him. He was not the founder or leader of the United Irishmen, and only his autobiography and glorification by Pearse have made him seem so.

But Tom Dunne goes overboard in demolishing him, psychoanalysing him as "colonial outsider" who turned republican because of his failed ambitions. He was a bourgeois nationalist, not the proto-socialist that Sinn Féin have tried to make of him. His political views developed during his life, but then we always knew that (those of us who have read anything about him).

The debate on "revisionism" in Irish history is valuable, even though I always seem to find myself agreeing with both sides.… (més)