quo.Some of these prisons and prisoners are famous: Terence MacSwiney and Thomas Ashe occupy a central position in the prison martyrology of Irish republican culture, and Kilmainham Gaol has become one of
the most popular tourist sites in Dublin. In spite of this, a comprehensive history of political imprisonment focused on these years does not exist. In Imprisonment and the Irish, 1912-1921, William Murphy attempts to provide such a history. He seeks to detail what it was like to be a political prisoner; how it smelled, tasted, and felt. More than that, the volume demonstrates that understanding political imprisonment of this period is one of the keys to understanding the Irish
revolution.Murphy argues that the politics of imprisonment and the prison conflicts analysed here reflected and affected the rhythms of the revolution, and this volume not only reconstructs and
assesses the various experiences and actions of the prisoners, but those of their families, communities, and political movements, as well as the attitudes and reactions of the state and those charged with managing the prisoners.
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