Citizen Lord is the enthralling story -- as Stella Tillyard has recreated it from personal letters and other sources -- of a headstrong young aristocrat who died a martyred rebel for the cause of Irish independence.Son of a duke, heir to estates and influence, Lord Edward Fitzgerald joined the British army as a teenager, but radical sentiments soon prevailed over loyalty to the Crown -- beliefs in the goodness of man and the importance of liberty and equality. In North America in 1787, Lord Edward spent time with the Iroquois: back in Europe he became a disciple of Thomas Paine, visited revolutionary France, and joined the Irish underground. Even his love life was political -- from his tragic affair with the wife of Richard Brinsley Sheridan to his marriage to the daughter of a French republican. Soon politics and passion came together: with his wife as helpmate, Lord Edward was plotting for Ireland's independence when, as the bloody rebellion of 1798 raged around him, he was mortally wounded by British police.In depicting the vital hidden relationships in Lord Edward's life -- with his mother, the Duchess of Leinster, and with his black servant and companion -- Stella Tillyard's splendid book also reminds us of the many ways in which forgotten, invisible forces shape the lives of those whom history remembers.