These are the journals of Robert Devereux, one of the leaders of the revolutionary Young Ireland group of 1848. They have lain undiscovered for more than a century on a hop farm in Tasmania. Uncovered, they tell the story of a highly unusual rebel.
Devereux and his comrades are from the Irish gentry: activists who believe so passionately in Irish freedom that they are prepared to hazard their lives of privilege in its cause. Paradoxically, they know little at first hand of the ordinary people they champion, who are ravaged by the Great Famine.
A panicked British government, fearing an armed rising led by Devereux, and disturbed by his celebrity status in Europe, convicts him of sedition. He is shipped out of Ireland, and what follows is an enthralling account of espionage, violence, and a lone man's defiance of a subtle and oppressive foe.
Sent first to a prison hulk at Bermuda, Devereux is then exiled to Van Diemen's Land, the British Empire's most far-flung colony, where he joins other Young Ireland leaders. Political prisoners, they are never actually imprisoned; the colony itself is their prison.
Robert Devereux is an exceptional yet divided spirit: a man of romantic sensibility who is also a man of action - calling on his people to take up arms against the British. In this, he is a spiritual father of Sinn Fein, and the IRA.
