Curious Journey: The IRA and Cumann Na Mban, 1916-1923

Originally published in 1982 and based on a banned film, Curious Journey is an eyewitness history of Ireland’s unfinished revolution from the 1916-1923 period. This new edition sets that period against the most recent conflict which erupted while the veterans were still alive, and the progress that has been made to resolve the national question.

Originally published in 1982 and based on a banned film, Curious Journey represented an eyewitness history of Ireland’s unfinished revolution from the 1916-1923 period. This 2022 edition includes a new introduction setting that period against the most recent conflict which erupted while the veterans were still alive, and the progress that has been made to resolve the national question.

IRA and Cumann na mBan Volunteers, Labour, women, language activists and militant republicans rose together against British rule in Ireland in the revolutionary days that included Easter 1916, the Tan War and the Civil War. Curious Journey is the tale of that tumultuous and tragic period told by nine men and women who lived it and who lived into old age to talk about their struggle and the tortuous complexities of a post-Treaty divided Ireland.

Timothy O’Grady is the author of the novels Motherland, Light and I Could Read the Sky and the non-fiction works, On Golf, Divine Magnetic Lands and Children of Las Vegas. His novel Monaghan will be published in 2023.

The late Kenneth Griffith was an actor and documentary film-maker who, along with his other investigations of the British Empire, made films about Roger Casement and Michael Collins.