Description

Pioneering human rights campaigner, patriot, romantic, traitor, LGBTQ+ martyr: this is the story of Roger Casement, one of the 20th century’s most complex and compelling figures.

‘A book of met iculous sensitivity and research’ TELEGRAPH
‘Extraordinary’ THE TIMES
‘Superbly written, genuinely exciting’ ANDREW ROBERTS
‘Outstanding’ JOHN PRESTON

In 1904, Casement became internationally celebrated for unearthing the grotesque violence of the Belgian Congo. Soon after he won even greater renown and a knighthood for his humanitarian work deep in the Amazon jungle.

But his internal fault lines ran deep: neither fully Irish nor English, baptised both Protestant and Catholic, desperate for love but forbidden intimacy, betrayed in his only significant relationship, he was of the English diplomatic establishment yet an outsider who fought for Irish nationhood. His final act in wartime Berlin – a doomed scheme to promote an invasion of Ireland – overwhelmed him. And while his subsequent trial for treason brought him some resolution, it also took him to an unmarked prison grave.

Casement was a contradictory figure made fallible by contemporary mores and his own unexamined emotions. Only decades later did an Irish state funeral finally assert his nobility above his notoriety – and only now can we fully understand his surprisingly modern and deeply relevant life and legacy.

‘In Roland Philipps [Casement] has found the biographer he deserves’ MICHELA WRONG, author of Do Not Disturb
‘Vivid, poignant and hugely moving’ HENRY HEMMING, author of Our Man in New York

**SHORTLISTED FOR HISTORY RECLAIMED’S HISTORY BOOK OF THE YEAR 2024**

Publisher Review

This minutely researched, superbly written and genuinely exciting biography explores and ultimately convincingly explains the historical conundrum that was Sir Roger Casement. I can’t remember turning the pages of a non-fiction book so eagerly to find out what happened next, secure in the knowledge that with Roland Philipps I was in the hands of a master-storyteller * Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill * One of the many outstanding things about this book is that Philipps has managed to yoke together the extraordinarily disparate sides of Roger Casement’s character into a comprehensible whole. In doing so, he has rescued him from the ignominy to which he has been unjustly consigned. * John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal * Patriot, human rights campaigner, knight of the realm, traitor. Roger Casement was a complex,
appealing, deeply flawed man. In Roland Philipps, he has found the biographer he deserves. This meticulous, sympathetic, elegantly-written account gives one of the 20th century’s most controversial and tragic players the attention he deserves * Michela Wrong, author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz * A superb portrait of an enigma. Roland Philipps has produced a masterful biography, full of compassion and verve. In bringing Casement to life, he has resurrected a figure who deserves to be known as the first modern human rights campaigner, one who saved countless lives and gave voice to those who could not be heard, before being undone by some of his deepest and innermost divisions. This is a vivid, poignant and hugely moving account of an extraordinary life * Henry Hemming, author of Agents of Influence * Roland Philipps’s comprehensive, perceptive and sympathetic biography does full justice to Casement’s odyssey from dysfunctional Ulster boyhood, through imperial service campaigning for exploited native workers, to his eventual execution as a nationalist revolutionary. It is a rich and compulsively readable treatment of the most extraordinary of Irish lives * Roy Foster, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford *