ENIGMA: A NEW LIFE OF CHARLES STEWART PARNELL (PB)

An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished and long-established Wicklow family, Charles Stewart Parnell became an unlikely leader of Irish nationalism. Though he was fundamentally conservative, he wished to reconcile his own landlord class to a new Ireland. From the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland – a taboo subject in British politics at the time – and effectively created the modern Irish state in embryo.