The Laurel and the Ivy: The Story of Charles Stewart Parnell and Irish Nationalism by Robert Kee (GT498)

Published 1993: First Edition / Hardcover / Very Good Condition / Illustrated throughout

Original black cloth with silver titles on the spine and original pictorial dust jacket. 659 very clean and bright pages. Slight shelf wear on the dust jacket and edges consistent with age. (GT498)

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News of the sudden death a hundred years ago of the 45-year-old Irish nationalist politician Charles Stewart Parnell shocked and amazed the public in Europe and the United States. Today he is little more than a name, associated with a sexual scandal which has been used as material for films and plays but largely ignored for its true that it altered the course of British and Irish history.
In ten years this half-American, half-Irish County Wicklow landlord with an English accent gave Irish nationalism its most effective political shape for centuries. In the 1880s his presence dominated British domestic politics. No prime minister could rule without taking into account how he might exercise his power next. Had he lived, the future of British-Irish relations could only have been different.
Robert Kee, in his first major book on Ireland since The Green Flag and his television series for the BBC, A Television History, here traces Parnell's early years in politics and his emergence in the context of the faltering state of Irish nationalism at that time. He stresses how ideally suited Parnell's personality was to bring it to life again. Ironically, it was the most personal feature of all in his life that brought the nationalist cause, for which he had done so much, to sudden halt. But its eventual partial triumph many years later was to be based on political foundations that Parnell had helped to establish.

Robert Kee, CBE was a broadcaster, journalist and writer, known for his historical works on World War II and Ireland.

He was educated at Stowe School, Buckingham, and read history at Magdalen College, Oxford, where he was a pupil, then a friend, of the historian A.J.P. Taylor.

During World War II he served in the Royal Air Force as a bomber pilot. His Hampden was shot down by flak one night while on a mine-laying operation off the coast of German-occupied Holland. He was imprisoned and spent three years in a German POW camp. This gave him material for his first book A Crowd Is Not Company. It was first published as a novel in 1947 but was later revealed to be an autobiography. It recounts his experiences as a prisoner of war and his various escapes from the Nazi camp. The Times describes it as "arguably the best POW book ever written."

His career in journalism began immediately after the Second World War. He worked for the Picture Post, then later became a special correspondent for The Sunday Times and The Observer. He was also literary editor of The Spectator.

In 1958 he moved to television. He appeared for many years on both the BBC and ITV as reporter, interviewer and presenter. He presented many current affairs programmes including Panorama, ITN's First Report and Channel 4's Seven Days. He was awarded the BAFTA Richard Dimbleby Award in 1976.

Kee wrote and presented the documentary series Ireland – A Television History in 1980. The work was widely shown in the United Kingdom and the United States and received great critical acclaim, winning the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. Following its transmission on RTÉ, the Irish national broadcaster, Kee won a Jacob's Award for his script and presentation.

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