Great Hatred (eBook)

Ronan McGreevy (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2022 | 1. Auflage
320 Seiten
Faber & Faber (Verlag)
978-0-571-37283-6 (ISBN)

Infos

THE IRISH TOP 10 BESTSELLER A gripping investigation into one of Irish history's greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil. 'Heart-stopping . . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner, and ultimately deeply tragic, for Ireland as much as for the murder victim.' MICHAEL PORTILLO 'Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history, uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process.' ANITA ANAND, author of The Patient Assassin 'Invaluable.' IRISH TIMES 'Intellgient and insightful.' IRISH INDEPENDENT On 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson - the former head of the British army and one of those credited with winning the First World War - was shot and killed by two veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century. His assassins were well-educated and pious men. One had lost a leg during the Battle of Passchendaele. Shocking British society to the core, the shooting caused consternation in the government and almost restarted the conflict between Britain and Ireland that had ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty just five months earlier. Wilson's assassination triggered the Irish Civil War, which cast the darkest of shadows over the new Irish State. Who ordered the killing? Why did two English-born Irish nationalists kill an Irish-born British imperialist? What was Wilson's role in the Northern Ireland government and the violence which matched the intensity of the Troubles fifty years later? Why would Michael Collins, who risked his life to sign a peace treaty with Great Britain, want one of its most famous soldiers dead, and how did the Wilson assassination lead to Collins' tragic death in an ambush two months later? Drawing upon newly released archival material and never-before-seen documentation, Great Hatred is a revelatory work that sheds light on a moment that changed the course of Irish and British history for ever. 'McGreevy provides more than the anatomy of a political murder; in reconstructing this era of blood, poverty and wartime trauma, he also gives full expression to the terrible forces that WB Yeats once called the 'fanatic heart' and the 'great hatred'.' THE TIMES 'Thoughtful and well-researched . . . an important and valuable addition to the library of the Irish Revolution.' PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER, University College Dublin

Ronan McGreevy is a news reporter and videographer with the Irish Times. He is the author of the book Wherever the Firing Line Extends: Ireland and the Western Front. He was made a Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French government for his work on remembrance and the First World War. He is the editor of Centenary: Ireland Remembers 1916, the official State book recalling the commemorations of 2016, and h Was It for This? Reflections on the Easter Rising, an anthology of commentary on the Easter Rising, also published in 2016. He is also the presenter of the full-length First World War documentary United Ireland: How Nationalists and Unionists Fought Together in Flanders, which was shortlisted for best film at the Imperial War Museum's short film competition in 2018. His most recent book is Great Hatred: The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP.

---

THE IRISH TOP 10 BESTSELLERA gripping investigation into one of Irish history's greatest mysteries, Great Hatred reveals the true story behind one of the most significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British soil. 'Heart-stopping . . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner, and ultimately deeply tragic, for Ireland as much as for the murder victim.'MICHAEL PORTILLO'Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history, uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process.'ANITA ANAND, author of The Patient Assassin'Invaluable.' IRISH TIMES'Intellgient and insightful.' IRISH INDEPENDENTOn 22 June 1922, Sir Henry Wilson - the former head of the British army and one of those credited with winning the First World War - was shot and killed by two veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century. His assassins were well-educated and pious men. One had lost a leg during the Battle of Passchendaele. Shocking British society to the core, the shooting caused consternation in the government and almost restarted the conflict between Britain and Ireland that had ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty just five months earlier. Wilson's assassination triggered the Irish Civil War, which cast the darkest of shadows over the new Irish State. Who ordered the killing? Why did two English-born Irish nationalists kill an Irish-born British imperialist? What was Wilson's role in the Northern Ireland government and the violence which matched the intensity of the Troubles fifty years later? Why would Michael Collins, who risked his life to sign a peace treaty with Great Britain, want one of its most famous soldiers dead, and how did the Wilson assassination lead to Collins' tragic death in an ambush two months later?Drawing upon newly released archival material and never-before-seen documentation, Great Hatred is a revelatory work that sheds light on a moment that changed the course of Irish and British history for ever. 'McGreevy provides more than the anatomy of a political murder; in reconstructing this era of blood, poverty and wartime trauma, he also gives full expression to the terrible forces that WB Yeats once called the "e;fanatic heart"e; and the "e;great hatred"e;.'THE TIMES'Thoughtful and well-researched . . . an important and valuable addition to the library of the Irish Revolution.'PROFESSOR DIARMAID FERRITER, University College Dublin

Textauszug

1

Assassination: ‘Here, in the middle of our own metropolis, he has been murdered’

Liverpool Street Station was once the biggest railway station in the biggest city in the world.1 In the 1920s its proximity to the City of London, to the engines of commerce and law in Shoreditch, Bank and Holborn and to the heart of the British Empire brought 220,000 commuters and 1,250 trains under its glass-covered roof every weekday.2 First came the workmen in their hardwearing fustian, followed by the clerks in their homburgs and straw boaters, and finally the professionals in their bowler hats who arrived late and stayed late. After the morning rush hour came the shoppers, the ladies and gentlemen who lunched, and then the theatre-goers.

Departing from the station were the daily excursion trains, which had been suspended for the duration of the First World War but were restored in 1920 and which took working-class families from the East End of London to the seaside resorts of Clacton-on-Sea, Southend, Lowestoft and Yarmouth. The station, like the city it served, was ceaseless.

On 22 June 1922 the bustle stopped for an allocated hour to remember the men from the Great Eastern Railway (GER) Company who had died in the Great War. At 12.50 p.m. the doors of the station were locked to all but the invited guests gathered in the booking hall under the high arches of the station roof. Outside, the flags on the roof of the station were at half-mast. It was midsummer, but an unseasonably cool and showery day.

For those gathered inside, the focal point of their sorrow was a marble memorial, seven metres high and eight wide, with laurel-twisted, fluted columns bearing the names in black lettering on a white background of 1,220 men from the company who had died in the First World War. At the centre of the memorial was the GER crest representing the areas of the east of England served by the company – Essex, Maldon, Ipswich, Norwich, Huntingdonshire, Hertfordshire and Northamptonshire. The inscription in red lettering read: ‘To the Glory of God and in grateful memory of the Great Eastern Railway Company staff who, in response to the call of their King and Country, sacrificed their lives during the Great War’.

This memorial was situated beside one unveiled in 1917 to Captain Charles Fryatt, a GER employee, who had been executed by the Germans the previous year. In March 1915, while in command of the SS Wrexham in the North Sea, he had attempted to ram a German U-boat that was about to torpedo his vessel. A year later he was captured while in command of the SS Brussels. The German authorities deemed that he had acted as a civilian and was therefore not entitled to the protections afforded to a prisoner of war. In 1919 his body had been repatriated with much solemnity via Liverpool Street Station, as, in that same year, were the remains of Edith Cavell, the nurse executed by the Germans in 1915 for her part in smuggling British servicemen out of occupied France and Belgium.3,4

Less than four years had passed since the end of the war. From the United Kingdom 886,000 men had died; from the entire British Empire the dead numbered 1.1 million. Britain was one of the victors, but victory was relative. Every country had lost. No family, community or company was untouched.5

London, once considered inviolable, had been attacked from the air, and the station had been hit twice. On 8 September 1915 bombs dropped by German Zeppelins fell on the tracks without loss of life. On 13 June 1917 a raid by German Gotha planes on the East End of London dropped bombs on platforms 8 and 9, killing thirteen commuters. It was witnessed by the war poet Siegfried Sassoon, who was home on leave from the front. Sassoon recalled that ‘an invisible enemy sent destruction spinning down from a fine weather sky’. The raid was more terrifying for having happened in daylight and for the huge loss of life. The 162 civilians who were killed in the East End that day presaged the even greater terrors of the Blitz a generation later.6

The memorial service began with the boys of St Stephen’s Choir from London, assisted by members of the station staff, singing the hymn ‘Let Saints on Earth in Concert Sing’. The Bishop of Norwich, Dr Bertram Pollock, stepped forward to offer prayers for the dead and for peace. He was followed by Lord Claud Hamilton, the successful railway entrepreneur and GER chairman, in his last public appearance in the role. The memorial was ‘beautiful and dignified’, he stated. It would stand in perpetuity in the middle of Liverpool Street Station in full view of commuters to honour the men who had left the safety of their railway employment to serve in the war. They had died that others might live.

He then introduced his good friend and the principal guest, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson, to unveil the memorial. Wilson was fifty-eight, an Ulster Unionist MP and a former career soldier. His four-year term as the Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), the British government’s most senior military advisor, had ended in February 1922. Within days he was elected unopposed as the Ulster Unionist MP for North Down in Northern Ireland.7

1 Liverpool Street Station, 22 June 1922: Wilson makes his speech at the unveiling of the war memorial to the men from the Great Eastern Railway who had died in the First World War

Although no longer an active soldier, Wilson was received like one. He was greeted at the entrance to the station and a guard of honour was formed on Platform 9 by ex-servicemen now back in civilian life as railway employees. Wilson was in good spirits as he passed along the ranks, making small talk and commending those who had won medals for gallantry in the war. At 6ft 4in he had lost the ungainliness that made him something of a figure of fun when he was a young subaltern cavalry officer, his knees jutting upwards from the stirrups as he rode horses too small for his extended gait. Wilson made the most of his physical presence. He was peculiar-looking, with a receding hairline, a greying moustache, a lined face and, most conspicuously, a scar on the right side of his eyeball socket which made his face droop. His right eye would often water and he frequently gave the impression of crying. Given his propensity for occasional emotional outbursts, it was never clear whether he was weeping or not. He was described by one female contemporary, Mary Garstin, as ‘the tall ugly Irishman whose torturous spirit seemed reflected in his twisted face’.8 He was fond of telling the story that when he was based in Belfast in 1891, a letter addressed to the ‘ugliest man in the army’ found an accurate recipient in him. Wilson had the confidence to laugh off the sobriquet and mentioned it often at public gatherings where he was invited to speak.

2 Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson

Wilson’s personality filled every room he entered as much as his physical presence did. Friends spoke of his ‘wild Irish ways’ and his sense of fun, accentuated by a loud laugh and a forthright manner. He could be admirably focused but also flippant in the gravest of circumstances, and this made people wary of him. He often called people by their nicknames, even august personages such as the French prime minister Georges Clemenceau, whom everybody called ‘Tiger’ behind his back, but Wilson did not hesitate to address him as such to his face.9

His physical and intellectual energies were inexhaustible. He had an engaging delivery that he had perfected at the British army’s Staff College, Camberley, as an instructor in the early years of the twentieth century. Students recalled his clarity of thought and delivery, attributes which he deployed at the highest levels of decision-making in the First World War. Sir George Barrow, a contemporary of Wilson at Staff College, regarded him as:

the most original, imaginative and humorous man I have ever known. He riveted the attention and made the dullest subjects bright. He brought something new, something nobody else had thought of into the discussions of lectures and problems, and his summings-up at conferences and on Staff tours were models of well-balanced judgements.10

Wilson was dressed in his field marshal’s uniform. The highest rank in the British army had not been given for his command in the field – he had spent just nine months as a general in the war – but for his services as an advisor. Wilson was one of the four men who won the war, according to many of his contemporaries. He, along with the Supreme Allied Commander Marshal Ferdinand Foch of France, the British prime minister David Lloyd George and Clemenceau, were seen by many as the principal architects of the Allied victory that brought Germany to sign a humiliating armistice in November 1918 and the Treaty of Versailles seven months later, in June 1919.

Wilson’s decisive interventions bookended the conflict. His far-sighted planning had ensured that the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) could deploy on the left...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 24.5.2022
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
• Schlagworte: BBC History Today, All About History, History Review, The History of WWII Podcast, War Stories, History Unplugged, War Studies, The History Extra Podcast • Imperial War Museum, the British Museum, National Army Musuem, Churchill War Rooms, National Museum of Ireland • Ronan McGreevy, Wherever the Firing Line Extends, Was It For This, Twas Better to Die, The Mad Guns, Centenary, Irish Times • The First World War, Hew Strachan, Goodbye to All That, Robert Graves, The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussell, The Guns of August, Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmerman Telegram, The Price of Glory, Alistair Horne, A Storm in Flanders, Winston Groom • The Patient Assassin, Anita Anand, The Arms Crisis, Michael Heney, Say Nothing, Patrick Radden Keefe, Guerrilla Days in Ireland, Tom Barry, On Another Man's Wound, Ernie O'Malley, Wounds, Fergal Keane, Michael Collins, Tim Pat Coogan, The Irish Civil War, George Morrisonj • Tom Holland, James Holland, Dominic Sandbrook, Saul David, Max Hastings • World War One, Irish History, Military History, Conflict History, Irish Civil War, Dublin History, British History, Political Assassinations, Irish Republican Army, IRA, Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP, Reginald Dunne, Joe O'Sullivan, Michael Collins
• ISBN-10: 0-571-37283-X / 057137283X
• ISBN-13: 978-0-571-37283-6 / 9780571372836