Mick: The Real Michael Collins

Hart goes to great lengths in the introduction to document that his book is the first to explore Collin's early years prior to the Easter Rising. I almost wish he had not. This exploration reveals a very ordinary childhood and early life. No one unfamiliar with his later career would guess the heights to which this unremarkable young man would climb. Indeed,I would guess that many simply put the book aside after the first 100 pages. Collins repeatedly failed civil service exams seeking advancement at very low levels in the Post Office. My impression is that he had no new ideas and little ability to persuade and bring along others to his point of view. If he had any genius, it was in sizing up a political situation and attaching himself to those with more leadership and imagination who would eventually win over the group. When these leaders left the scene (often unwillingly through imprisonment) Collins was there to carry on the program that he had adopted from his mentor. It is far from clear that the Irish struggle for independence would have proceeded any more slowly had Michael Collins remained in London throughout the period. This is not to say that the book had little to recommend it. The treatment of the issues, the personalities and the evolving policies of the British to this powder keg next door made for some fascinating reading. At the center, however, was a very ordinary apparatchik with an ability to be at the right place at the right time, but almost never in control of anything.

This is an excellent biography which begins by tracing the various literature written concerning Michael Collins' life and stating the manner in which the author seeks to differentiate his work from earlier biographies. In large part he succeeds. The work is fairly well written and definitely adds to a more comprehensive understanding of the man who became one of the most important figures in Ireland's history. Highly recommended.

This is the 92nd Anniversary of the Easter Uprising of 1916- Chocky Ar La I have spent a fair amount of my adult political life fighting for a just solution to the national question in Ireland and for justice for the Catholic minority in the North (and any Protestant workers who will listen) thus I am no stranger to the name Michael Collins. However, as Peter Hart has gone to pains to describe in his well-thought out biography Mick is a very contradictory man both in his expression of his personal aspirations for Ireland (and himself) and the political choices that he made in the important 1920-22 period just before his death. The consequences of his actions (and others, notably Eamon de Valera) are still being played out today as the struggle for that just solution to the national question continues. For those who are not familiar with Collins' biography (affectionately known as the Big Fellow) or have not seen the fairly recent commercial film about his life (starring Liam Neelson) Collins represented that next generation of leaders who survived the Easter Uprising of 1916- the event that is the real start of the modern national liberation struggle in Ireland. Mr. Hart spends some useful time detailing Mick's schooling, upbringing and the development of his administrative skills that would prove very helpful in his rise to the top of the Irish revolutionary movement. The real meat of the book, however, describes the rocky road to the top in the struggle to break Ireland from English domination. This period from about 1917 to his death in 1922 is both where his huge reputation was made but also where the limits of his capacity to lead Ireland to real independence from the British are displayed. That failure, exemplified by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, has caused no little ink to be spilled on both sides of the divide that ultimately led to the civil war that tore the republican camp apart. This is hardly the place to have a full discussion of that question but I confess that I am still baffled by Mick's decision to sign the treaty. To a great extent he, more so than de Valera, was the very Irish face of the military struggle lead by the then current version the Irish Republican Army. Despite Collins' well-informed and industrious intelligence apparatus formed in his role as `commander-in-chief' of the republican military forces I believe that he overrated the ability of the British to stay in Ireland in the immediate post World War I period. Lloyd George, not for the first time, got the better of the revolutionaries (as he did with others, witness the 1919 strikesin England and Scotland). That miscalculation, among other issues, led to the signing of the treaty widely seen as a betrayal of the republican struggle and the abandonment of the peoples in the North. While Collin's historically has had the best of it on this question though the efforts of his many biographers this thorny issue is still with us. Too much blood has been spilled

I enjoyed this book. M. Collins was shown to be an interesting man living among interesting people in interesting times. I am an interested, but not as interesting, amateur and not qualified to speak to the detailed criticisms made by some of the earlier reviewers or Publishers Weekly. All in all though, I found the subject matter fascinating, to the extent that plowing through this dense biography was a joy. I may pick up some of the other sources and try to gain another perspective some day. I was willing to tolerate a few stylistic lapses on the part of Mr. Hart (at times he was on too familiar terms with his subject, but this is a small matter). One can forgive the fact that a good understanding of the era may be necessary for a full appreciation; many readers will be able enough to overcome the gaps in their knowledge. Best for me was that the portrait of Collins and his era was nuanced and new. It also helped me to understand just how an old-fashioned revolution against a colonial power could come to be. The romanticism is thankfully kept to a minimum, and the author's opinions are stated with sobriety. I felt he truly liked his subject and found myself in agreement with his closing assessment.

Why do we need another biography of Michael Collins to add to the 13 we already have? Author Peter Hart answers by explaining that he has drawn upon materials and documents which earlier biographers have overlooked, but which are available to the public. The result is a more balanced portrait of the man that the Irish have voted the most significant Irishman of the 20th century. MICK is therefore chock full of passages from letters to and from Collins and observations by those who knew and met him--some quite variant, and a plethora of data. The book--which covers the life span from Collins' boyhood to his death--is not so sensational as Frank O'Connor's biography and not so action-packed as Tim Pat Coogan's. Hart's thesis is that we would not be able to guess, from Collins' youth and from his early life in London, that he would become a leader in the Irish revolution, or in fact a leader at all. As a boy he showed little promise. Later as an emigre in London, he immersed himself in multiple Irish asociations, and was able to advance because he positioned himself in the right place at the right time, namely when other young men were leaving to fight in World War I. Collins held a series of clerical jobs in London, the last of which was as a functionary in a banking house, but showed little aptitude for numbers beyond arithmetic. Collins, then with a sense of mission, carried over this strategy to Dublin when the revolutionary movement began. Again he took offices in multiple Irish acivist groups: the Irish Republican Brotherhood, the Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Army. In most cases he served as treasurer or as dispenser of funds. During this time he was not making policy but binding himself to friends and creating loyalties. He gained a reputation as being punctual, wholly reliable, and clearly above reproach in the spending of moneys. Hart charts Collins' rise in the independence movement through the Easter Rebellion, though the Dublin guerilla war that followed, to Minister of Finance for the new Irish government and ultimately to Commandant of the Irish Free State Army. The author exonerates de Valera from the charge of betrayal when he sent Collins over to London to negotiate the Treay with British ministers Lloyd George and Winston Churchill. He narrates closely Collins' sojourn in London during the Treaty talks, and makes clear that Collins voted for partition of Ireland only because he believed the English were ready to send over their armies and conduct a blood bath. Later, during the ensuing Irish Civil War, Collins found himself on the opposite side from de Valera, but Hart defends de Valera from the accusation that he engineered Collins' death at Beal na Blath. This biography plays down Collins' penchant for horseplay and heavy drinking, and plays up his attention to detail, his indefatigability, his long work days. It plays down his success in conducting a campaign of assassination in Dublin, and stresses his