Praise for The Irish Assassins:
Shortlisted for the ALCS Gold Dagger for Nonfiction
“Lively and suspenseful…Ms. Kavanagh’s narrative of high politics and low intrigue, ranging from Dublin to Downing Street and the high seas, brings to vivid life a bloody chapter in the troubled history of Britain and Ireland.”—Wall Street Journal “Julie Kavanagh has done an adroit unpicking of the intricacies of the history, and her book is at once admirable for its scholarship and immensely enjoyable in its raciness.”—John Banville, New York Times
“Kavanagh’s is a sweeping and compelling narrative of a story that more than bears retelling. What she has sought to do, which has not been done before, is to try to connect in time the political and social lives of what is an extended and diverse cast of characters in Britain and Ireland, spanning from the Gladstone household (of which Lucy Cavendish, wife of the murdered Frederick, was a close member), to Parnell’s relationship with Katharine O’Shea, and encompassing the poverty-stricken background in Gweedore of Patrick O’Donnell and his people.”—Irish Times
“It can be hard to navigate the intricacies of nineteenth-century Irish political history accessibly, but Julie Kavanagh’s well-researched The Irish Assassins turns the complex story of the Phoenix Park murders and their aftermath into a pacy and absorbing narrative. Character-driven and strong on human interest, the book tethers the story of the murders to the lives and careers of its protagonists.” — Times Literary Supplement
“With a novelist's eye for detail, Kavanagh reminds us in her new book The Irish Assassins how English rule in Ireland not only diminished the lives of the oppressed Irish natives but how it also unmoored the moral compass of centuries of English colonists too…pacy and deeply learned…brilliantly entertaining.”—Irish Central
“Julie Kavanagh, in her terrific new book, The Irish Assassins, does a masterful job of sorting through the complexities and making the history accessible and comprehensible…a gripping story, well and clearly told.”—Minneapolis Star Tribune
“You could think of this as the prequel to Patrick Radden Keefe’s best seller Say Nothing…Although the events in these two books are set nearly a hundred years apart, they are linked by the push and pull in that country between Protestant and Catholic, between peace and violence, between independence and accord. —Chris Schluep, Amazon Editor’s Pick
“The tale of the Phoenix Park murders is not unfamiliar, but Kavanagh recounts it with a great sense of drama…Kavanagh’s account reminds me of the very best of true crime, the sort that Dominick Dunne used to write for Vanity Fair. Like Dunne, Kavanagh never hurries; she takes the time to describe characters and places with exquisite detail. An engaging story is rendered beautiful because of the tiny ephemera that a less sensitive author might have carelessly discarded.” —Times (UK)
“The dramatic story of the Phoenix Park murders — including the background to the killings and their cataclysmic aftermath — is told with novelistic panache by Julie Kavanagh…This is not just the fascinating tale of the shadowy group of determined killers and their victims, but it also paints a picture of some of the key political figures of the time.”—Irish Independent “Journalist Julie Kavanagh’s account of the murders of two members of the British authority in Ireland in 1882 has the plot and intrigue of a sweeping 19th-century novel…The Irish Assassins is a colourful, ambitious book that sometimes spreads its sprawling narrative too thinly—but still makes most other accounts of the period seem bloodless by comparison.”—Sunday Business Post (UK)
“What Julie Kavanagh has done here is to bring this most extraordinary of assassinations to life. The research is meticulous... The writing is clear and yet warm, leaving the reader in no doubt as to how much personalities, foibles and mere coincidence affect law, politics and history. This is one of the best researched and most enjoyable historical reads I have come across in quite some time.”—Sunday Independent (UK)
“Journalist Kavanagh delivers a page-turning history of the murders of the chief secretary and the undersecretary for Ireland in May 1882…This entertaining and richly detailed chronicle offers fresh insights into a conflict whose repercussions are still felt today.” —Publishers Weekly
“This entertaining and informative narrative is populated by colorful characters on both sides of the conflict, all of whom are brought to vivid life by Kavanagh’s stellar writing.”—Booklist, starred review “[A] riveting tale that is both deeply researched and unforgettable . . . Skillfully tells a complex story of ambition, conspiracy, betrayal, and coercion that was centuries in the making, with implications that reach to the 21st century . . . Expertly blending history and true crime, this is an essential read for anyone wanting to understand modern Irish history. Kavanagh’s writing is engaging from start to finish.”—Library Journal, starred review
“[Kavanagh’s] account is gripping. But what makes her book fresh and different is her determination not just to tell a good story but to give full attention to the background and the aftermath, and to bring to life and take seriously not just the main actors but the many significant minor players in the drama.”—Tablet (UK)
“As true crime stories go, this one has it all: clandestine plotting, scandalous affairs, shadowy organizations, brutal murders, far-reaching political implications, and, for good measure, someone known as 'the Irish Sherlock Holmes.' . . . Kavanagh’s gripping account of the murders is a stark reminder that history is a chaotic jumble of chance, circumstance, and opportunity, as much about what could have been as about what was.” —Literary Hub
“In painstaking and sometimes-harrowing detail, journalist Kavanagh examines the fatal 1882 stabbings of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke. . . A cinematic, multilayered revenge tragedy centered on Ireland’s fraught quest for independence.” —Kirkus Reviews
“Enlightening, absorbing, and very exciting.” —Lady Antonia Fraser
“Julie Kavanagh has taken a violent and sensational event, the assassination of two senior government official in Dublin in 1882, and placed it in a richly contextualized and many-layered historical setting. Using a wide range of sources and opening up new avenues of enquiry, she vividly demonstrates the convulsive reverberations of one violent act, tracing the shock-waves it sent into political salons at Westminster, cabins in County Donegal, court circles at Windsor, revolutionary cabals in Paris, the Irish leader Parnell’s secret life in a London suburb, and the complex world of the transatlantic Irish diaspora. Consummately well-written and full of novel insights, this is the best kind of historical detective story.” —R. F. Foster, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, University of Oxford
“In The Irish Assassins, Julie Kavanagh has brilliantly succeeded in making a complex sequence of events irresistibly accessible, providing an engrossing narrative that is violent, tragic, sometimes funny, extremely astute and remarkably well written.” —Selina Hastings, author of Sybille Bedford: A Life
“This book is a fascinating, beautifully written account of an event whose consequences reverberate even today.” —Tony Blair
“This is one of those rare books that is superbly written, tells me something I need to know, and which grips the imagination from first word to last. Julie Kavanagh has produced an engrossing account of revolutionary violence, political folly and human weakness. It is a powerful work.” —Fergal Keane, BBC Ireland Correspondent
“In The Irish Assassins, Julie Kavanagh manages the extraordinary feat of guiding the reader through the complexities of Anglo-Irish politics while building the combined tension of an electric political thriller with a tragic love story. The people are real, the events still matter today and the impact is Shakespearean.” —Ralph Fiennes
Praise for Julie Kavanagh:
“Ms. Kavanagh excels in describing the period.” —Wall Street Journal, on The Girl Who Loved Camelias
“With her colorful new biography, The Girl Who Loved Camellias, Julie Kavanagh exposes the tawdry reality behind her heroine’s legend. The author of an acclaimed life of Rudolf Nureyev, Kavanagh reveals that cold-eyed pragmatism, not saintly self-abnegation, formed the bedrock of Duplessis’ character and career.” —New York Times, on The Girl Who Loved Camelias
“In Nureyev: The Life, journalist and author Julie Kavanagh puts us in the midst of the people who surrounded Nureyev, supporting or battling him (or both) throughout his career… The book is dense with detail and character but haunted by a sense of loss.” —Christian Science Monitor, on Nureyev
“Kavanagh gives us the fascinating details of the life of a modern-day genius in honest, thoroughly researched, achingly objective prose.” —Denver Post, on Nureyev
“Julie Kavanagh's Nureyev: The Life offers a critically authoritative biography of the legendary dancer that should appeal to scholars and casual fans alike, combining exhaustive research with delightfully juicy, gossip-filled anecdotes to paint a remarkably full-blooded portrait…Nureyev is not propelled by exhaustive scholarship as much as terrific storytelling. Kavanagh seeds the book with vivid details.” —Boston Globe, on Nureyev
“Julie Kavanagh, a British dance journalist who trained as a dancer and the author of Secret Muses: The Life of Frederick Ashton, has written a superbly researched biography of Nureyev.” —New York Times, on Nureyev
