Roger Casement had a life that defies categorisation: an imperial administrator who exposed imperial atrocities; a one-time diplomat for the United Kingdom who enlisted German help in Ireland’s fight for freedom; a closeted gay man who left detailed records of his sexual adventures; a knight of the realm convicted of conspiring against the crown.
TE Lawrence (“of Arabia”), himself no stranger to the hypocrisy of British imperialism and the difficulties of illegal sexuality, called Casement a “broken archangel”. Rory Carroll, the Guardian’s Ireland correspondent, retains some of that poetry in this deeply researched and fascinating account of Casement’s role in the creation of the Irish state.
The bulk of the action in A Rebel and a Traitor takes place between 1914 and 1916. At the start of this period, Casement – still respected in London as a recently retired consul in Britain’s diplomatic service – gives evidence to a royal commission in 1914 on the regulation of service overseas. By the end, he is awaiting execution for treason at Pentonville prison.
In between, the ex-diplomat travelled to the US to rally support for the Irish cause; to Germany, to raise an army to fight the British; to Ireland on the eve of the Easter Rising; and then back to London, this time as a captive.
Casement was bequeathed, in Carroll’s words, a “fractured identity” as the child of a Protestant father and a Catholic mother who were both dead by the time he was 12. He was courteous and tireless and, in the words of the man who killed him, “the bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute”.
A depressive nomad who felt lonely even among friends, he joined the colonial service in the late 19th century and served in Africa, where he became so appalled by the plight of rubber workers in the Belgian Congo that he worked tirelessly to expose their exploitation. His experiences there, as well as in South Africa during the Boer war, were to turn him decisively against colonialism, and he left government in 1913.
Casement’s nemesis was Reginald “Blinker” Hall, an arrogant and obsessive naval captain with a facial tic who headed up the British admiralty’s intelligence service and, through his access to decrypted telegrams between Germany and the US, tracked the Irishman’s attempts to enlist Berlin to the cause of Irish independence. Alongside the two of them is a cast of nationalists, socialists, imperialists, viceroys, rural police officers, bewildered agricultural labourers and more.
Carroll’s achievement is to situate this by turns tragic, farcical and heroic duel within the broader context of the first world war without ever allowing it to be overshadowed by the slaughter elsewhere. The U-boat commander who delivered Casement to Ireland had, just a few months earlier, sunk the Lusitania and thus killed more than 1,000 people – but the focus remains on the smaller battle within the global conflict.
In normal times, Casement might have ended up making speeches on Hyde Park Corner or writing articles for niche publications. In the heightened circumstances of world war, however, when young men were marched to their deaths by the thousand and governments took risks they would never normally contemplate, he won an audience among Britain’s adversaries, and the chance to change the destiny of his nation.
Casement was recaptured shortly after his return to Ireland, so his attempt to lead his nation to freedom was – in crude terms – a failure. However, along with the similarly abortive Rising in Dublin, it helped create the mood of defiance that led to open war and the once impossible-seeming dream of an Irish state becoming reality.
At the end of the book, I did find myself wishing it went on to analyse the reasons for the eventual defeat of British rule in the years following Casement’s execution, and to describe more fully the more consequential Irish leaders of the time. However, that is not what Carroll is here to do, and he succeeds in his core task of humanising a complex man, giving him credit for his strengths while never hiding his flaws, not least his penchant for young and vulnerable sexual partners.
There have been attempts to film Casement’s life in the past – a 1934 Hollywood screenplay even imagined a tearful parting from a blond girlfriend – and I would not be surprised if a producer reads this book and decides to have another go. There would surely be a lot of competition for the chance to play the role of this strange, fascinating, improbable man.
• A Rebel and a Traitor: A Fugitive, the Manhunt and the Birth of the IRA by Rory Carroll is published by Mudlark (£22). To support the Guardian, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply.
