Category: Irish History

It all began with a reporter’s notebook and a murder, but by the time I’d finished, the story had expanded to encompass Irish land wars, adulterous love, a trans-Atlantic assassination plot, the whims and venom of Queen Victoria, acts of realpolitik, courtroom drama and even the intervention of the American President. I found the notebook in a trunk when sorting through my late parents’ papers. My father, Christopher Kavanagh, a South African journalist had written a longhand transcription of an …