Vivid Faces

<p><b><i>OBSERVER </i>BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2015</b><br><br><b><i>TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT </i>BOOKS OF THE YEAR and <i>OBSERVER </i>BOOKS OF THE YEAR 2014</b><br><br><b>WINNER OF THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION'S MORRIS D. FORKOSCH PRIZE 2016</b><br><b><br>'The most complete and plausible exploration of the roots of the 1916 Rebellion... essential reading' Colm T&#243;ib&#237;n<br></b><br><i>Vivid Faces</i> surveys the lives and beliefs of the people who made the Irish Revolution: linked together by youth radicalism subversive activities enthusiasm and love. Determined to reconstruct the world and defining themselves against their parents they were in several senses a revolutionary generation.<br><br>The Ireland that eventually emerged bore little relation to the brave new world they had conjured up in student societies agit-prop theatre groups vegetarian restaurants feminist collectives volunteer militias Irish-language summer schools and radical newspaper offices. Roy Foster's book investigates that world and the extraordinary people who occupied it. <br><br>Looking back from old age one of the most magnetic members of the revolutionary generation reflected that 'the phoenix of our youth has fluttered to earth a miserable old hen' but he also wondered 'how many people nowadays get so much fun as we did'. Working from a rich trawl of contemporary diaries letters and reflections <i>Vivid Faces</i> re-creates the argumentative exciting subversive and original lives of people who made a revolution as well as the disillusionment in which it ended.</p>