The GPO and the Easter Rising

Description

All existing accounts of the GPO in 1916 concentrate on the Volunteers who occupied the building on Easter Monday. But what of those Dubliners and others who were working in the Post Office that morning? Their experiences have been largely ignored in all the subsequent historiography. While not neglecting the rebels, this book tells their story too, using hitherto unpublished material drawn from the treasure-trove of documents relating to the Rising held in the British Post Office Archives, which has remained unexplored for ninety years and never before exploited by historians. This material is complemented with further important unpublished material from the British National Archives, as well as other vivid eyewitness accounts first published shortly after the Rising. These new accounts are combined with the stories told in The Sinn Fein Rebellion As They Saw It (published by Irish Academic Press in 1999), and together they bring a strikingly fresh perspective to the history of the Rising.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. The Occupation of the GPO
3. The Secretary’s Tales
4. The Wife’s Tale
5. The Civil Servant’s Tales
6. A Rebel’s Tale
7. A Priest’s Tale
8. An Onlooker’s Tale
9. Rounding Up the ‘Usual Suspects’

About the Author

Keith Jeffery is Professor of British History at Queen’s University, Belfast and Official Historian of MI6.