#1 – 1916
Fifteen-year-old Ned Halloran survives the sinking of the Titanic but loses both parents, returning to Ireland with little certainty about his future. At Saint Enda’s school in Dublin he comes under the influence of headmaster Patrick Pearse and enters a circle in which language, education and…
#2 – 1921
Journalist Henry Mooney tries to report truthfully as guerrilla war, reprisals and political negotiation bring the Irish struggle for independence towards a settlement. His work places him close to Michael Collins, Éamon de Valera and the competing factions of the movement, while his love for an…
#3 – 1949
Ursula Halloran comes of age in the state created by revolution and civil war, where independence has not produced equal freedom for all its citizens. As conservative Catholic institutions shape education, employment, marriage and public morality, she resists the expectation that a woman’s ambitions must be…
#4 – 1972
Barry Halloran grows up with the revolutionary inheritance of his parents and grandparents but finds the island still divided. At eighteen he joins the Irish Republican Army believing armed struggle can complete an unfinished revolution, only to encounter the secrecy, discipline and moral compromises demanded by…
#5 – 1999
At the end of the twentieth century, Barry Halloran remains marked by the violence he witnessed and the causes to which his family devoted itself. Ireland is changing rapidly through economic expansion and social transformation, while Northern Ireland’s ceasefires and negotiations create the possibility that political…