Charles Stewart Parnell: F.S.L. Lyons

Charles Stewart Parnell (1846 - 1891) came closer, perhaps, than anyone to solving the Irish problem while keeping Britain united, Protestant, aloof, English-educated, he was an unlikely character to fulfil the role of Messiah for Irish nationalists. Yet they called him the uncrowned king of Ireland and were it not for ill-health and his doomed liasion with Kitty O'Shea, this enigmatic Anglo-Irishman might well have achieved a lasting Irish peace; that he did not was England's and Ireland's tragedy as well as his own. Winner of the Royal Society of Literature Award, 1977. Illustrated with black and white photographs.