The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge and the Murders that Stunned an Empire
JULIE KAVANAGH
(GROVE PRESS, 336 PP, £18.99)
Tablet bookshop price £17.09 • tel 020 7799 4064

Of all the many ugly acts of violence that have for centuries blighted Anglo-Irish relations, the Phoenix Park murders of 1882 must be among the most devastating. On a fine summer evening, two men working for the British government, one Irish, one English, were cut to pieces as they walked home through the park by five Irish members of an extreme nationalist group calling themselves the Invincibles. The Irish victim, Thomas Burke, was intended: a senior civil servant known as the Castle Rat, he was targeted for his long and effective work for the British rulers in Dublin. His companion, Lord Frederick Cavendish, was collateral damage, having only arrived early that same day to take up the post of chief secretary, ­chosen by the Prime Minister, Gladstone, to open a new and hopeful stage of negotiations aiming at Home Rule. His random killing meant that that opportunity, like so many others down the years, was lost. The assassins were eventually caught and hanged: the informer who betrayed them was assassinated in his turn. The cycle of atrocity continued.