The Big and the Long Fellow; or the Tragedy and Farce of the Irish Counter-Revolution

Abstract

In June 1920, the head of the British Army, Henry Wilson, feared ‘the loss of Ireland to begin with; the loss of empire in the second place; and the loss of England itself to finish with.’1 Two years later, with Wilson’s corpse barely cold, Michael Collins, who apparently ordered his assassination, launched a civil war against his former republican comrades with British artillery.