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Patrick O’Donnell achieved the status of a national hero when he killed Ireland’s most infamous informer James Carey on board a steamship off the coast of South Africa in 1883. Why did the quiet-spoken labourer from the Donegal Gaeltacht shoot the leading Fenian in the Phoenix Park murders? And why did the President of the United States of America and the French writer Victor Hugo plead that Patrick O’Donnell not be hanged for his crime? Drawing extensively on court transcripts, official records from archives in Ireland, Britain, South Africa and America and many other sources, The Queen v Patrick O'Donnell reveals for the first time the full story behind one of the most compelling murder stories in Irish history, a thrilling tale of violence, courtroom drama, romance and political intrigue. Containing evidence from British Home Office files kept secret for 100 years, this account reveals shocking new information about the fate of Patrick O’Donnell. This book provides the basis for a major feature-length drama documentary for TG4 also entitled The Queen –v – Patrick O’Donnell to be transmitted later this year/early next year. Seán Ó Cuirreáin is a former journalist and broadcaster who worked primarily in news and current affairs. He served as deputy head of RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta prior to being appointed as Ireland’s first Language Commissioner (2004-2014). His book Éagóir [Injustice] (Cois Life, 2016) on the Maamtrasna Murders and the subsequent drama-documentary Murdair Mhám Trasna (TG4, 2018) contributed to the process which led to the posthumous presidential pardon for Maolra Seoighe/ Myles Joyce who was wrongly convicted and hanged for those murders. A graduate of NUIG, Seán Ó Cuirreáin is originally from the Donegal Gaeltacht but has lived in the Gaeltacht in Galway for many years. He was appointed a member of the Council of State by President Michael D. Higgins in April 2019.

The diaries of Dr Kathleen Lynn, 1916-1955, cover her involvement in the 1916 Rising, the War of Independence, the Civil War, and the formative three and a half decades of the Irish Free State. They demonstrate the revolutionary, socialist and feminist fervour of a radical revolutionary woman, what motivated her and the work she did for women, workers, and Ireland. The diaries, held in the archives of the Royal College of Physicians of Ireland (RCPI), reveal the often-difficult road that radical political women forged in the new Irish Free State, which viewed women through the constraining lens of marriage, motherhood, and domesticity. The diaries are also revealing of the supportive networks of political women, who worked together for social and political change. Central to the diaries is Lynn's vital work in St Ultan's Hospital for Sick Infants which she co-founded in 1919. Her diaries demonstrate vividly the number of women who led advances in medical care in the first decades of the State alongside Lynn. The diaries also record her family and personal relationships, especially her lifelong relationship with fellow suffragist, revolutionary and social campaigner, Madeline ffrench-Mullen. Few political women of the revolutionary era and Irish Free State have left behind as substantial an archive as Dr Kathleen Lynn. The publication of these selected extracts from her diaries are a move to readdress issues created by past archival practices which have, in many cases, marginalised or silenced the voices of women. The diaries add not only to our knowledge of the life of Dr Lynn but also to the histories of female activists, female networks, and intimate female lives in the Irish State during its formative decades. FOREWORD by author Emma Donoghue. PAPERBACK , BRAND NEW, 2023 UCD PRESS