The Irish Assassins: Conspiracy, Revenge, and the Phoenix Park Murders That Stunned Victorian England

Yet it would be shattered one sunlit evening, on May 6, 1882, as Gladstone’s emissary, Lord Frederick Cavendish, who had arrived that day in Dublin, and Thomas Burke, the undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans armed with specially made surgeon’s blades. The impact of the assassinations was so cataclysmic that it destroyed the peace pact, almost brought down the government, and set in motion repercussions that would last long into the twentieth century.

In a story that spans Donegal, Dublin, London, Paris, New York, Cannes, and Cape Town, Julie Kavanagh traces the crucial events that came before and after the murders. From Parnell’s passionate affair with an Irish MP’s wife, Katharine “Kitty” O’Shea, which eventually caused his downfall, to Queen Victoria’s prurient obsession with the assassinations; from the investigation spearheaded by Superintendent John Mallon, the “Irish Sherlock Holmes,” who tirelessly tracked down each member of the Invincibles, to the eventual betrayal and clandestine escape of leading Invincible James Carey and his murder on the high seas; The Irish Assassins brings us intimately into this fascinating story that shaped Irish politics and engulfed an empire. This is an unputdownable book from one of our most “compulsively readable” (Guardian) writers.