'We declare the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland' — Easter Uprising, 1916

Padraic Pearse's proclamation on the 23rd of March 1916 outside the GPO in Dublin is surely one of the most courageous and self sacrificial speeches in modern history.

Pearse was leader of the Irish Republican Brotherhood, who teamed with James Connolly’s Irish Citizens Army and the women of Cumann na mBan in an armed act of insurrection, that lasted almost from Easter Monday 1916 to the following Saturday.

It’s an incredible story, an attempt at revolution almost certainly doomed to failure, and yet it becomes the bl…