I have been reading Seán O’Fáolin’s The Great O’Neill: A Biography of Hugh O’Neill Earl of Tyrone, 1550-1616. Hugh O’Neill led the last and greatest Irish revolt against Queen Elizabeth of England. It culminated in the disastrous battle of Kinsale at the end of 1601, about which O’Fáolin wrote

That week, from about the 17th of December (1601) onward, held Tyrone’s life….It was one of the decisive moments in the history of Ireland, incomparably more important than the the Battle of the Boyne, or any other battle in the whole course of her history. Kinsale was to mean to Ireland, for ever, a parting of the ways, a scission with everything that had gone before, an ending as absolute as death. Tyrone had the game in his hands, and he threw it away by deciding to attack. He should have hung on. He should have been faithful to Time who had never been unfaithful to him. He should have turned the screw on Mountjoy as Mountjoy had turned it on him for nearly two years. If he had held out for five years could he not have held out now for five weeks? In deciding to attack he turned his whole attitude, his whole mental outlook, his idea of life, his entire critical opinion of Ireland inside out. For what had been the curse of Ireland for centuries was rashness and recklessness, and improvidence, and incogitancy, tons of courage and hardly an ounce of brains, all the qualities and faults that naturally depend from the turbulent life of the border. These had created a racial psychosis in which patience and a regard for time and the discipline of restraint played but a small part. His strength had lain in his cultivation of these virtues and his whole life had crowned Time as the goddess of them all.

It has been criticized, with reason, for inaccuracies about some details. However, for its portrait of the man Hugh O’Neill I can forgive a lot. O’Neill’s character–why he did what he did–is the key problem of this critical phase of Irish History.

It is a really great book. I am reading it on the bus to and from work. More than once I have been so caught up in the story that I almost missed my stop.