RORY CARROLL

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The story of Roger Casement and Reginald ‘Blinker’ Hall, the mercurial spy chief who sought to destroy him, and his cause, by any means.

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It was a duel between two very different men – one trying to save an empire, the other trying to create a nation - waged in the shadows of the first world war. The game of cat-and-mouse played out in London, Berlin, New York and Dublin with a supporting cast of codebreakers, swindlers, gunrunners and fanatics. The Easter 1916 Rising erupts in these pages but the story continues to a quieter, devastating coda.

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It may read like a novel but is non-fiction. I combed diaries, letters, police reports, memoirs, court transcripts, secret service archives and declassified government files to create a propulsive story that resonates today. Its aftermath still echoes through Anglo-Irish relations and raises profound questions about honour, courage and the price of patriotism. I am indebted to an outstanding researcher, Steve Ramsay, who peeled back layers of the historical record to establish, as much as possible, what really happened.