‘You’ll Take My Place with the Boys’: Peadar O’Donnell, <i>Storm</i> and Republican Autobiography

In the decade following the Irish Civil War (1922–1923) the radical republican, socialist and writer Peadar O’Donnell (1893–1986) began a campaign of political agitation and subversion against the newly founded Free State government of Cumman na Gaedheal. During this time he also published four novels and was a contributor to and editor of the IRA newspaper An Phoblacht. Substantial amounts of this material were written on the run, in incarceration, or under harassment from Free State Forces, as was his autobiographical novel Storm (1925). The novel contains many incidents that are of interest to the history of the period and to an understanding of O’Donnell’s own life as an active participant in armed struggle. In particular, the violence within Storm can be identified with specific events in the Anglo-Irish War that throw light on that conflict and on the experiences that O’Donnell was able to utilise in the construction of the novel. These incidents, when read in conjunction with newly released witness statements and records from the Bureau of Military History, offer us a fresh insight in republican life writing and autobiography that can help us to better contextualise the period and enrich our understanding of the conflict