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 Tóibín<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> <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 Tóibín<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>