Interned: The Curragh Internment Camps in the War of Independence

By James Durney

During the War of Independence, faced with an armed insurrection it couldn’t stop, the British government introduced increasingly harsh penalties for suspected republicans, including internment without trial. This led to the incarceration of thousands of men in camps around the country, including the Rath and Hare Park Camps at the Curragh in County Kildare. Interned is the first book to tell the story of the men who were held in the Curragh internment camps, which housed republicans from all over Ireland. Faced with harsh conditions, unforgiving guards and inadequate and often inedible food, the prisoners maintained their defiance of the British regime and took whatever chances they could to defy their gaolers, including a number of escapes. The most audacious of these was in September 1921, during the Truce period, when sixty men escaped through a tunnel.
This unique book is the first to investigate the Curragh Internment Camps, which housed thousands of republicans from all over Ireland. It contains a list of names and addresses of some 1,500 internees, which will be fascinating to their descendants and those interested in local history, as well as an exploration and details of the 1921 escape, which was one of the largest and most successful IRA escape in history.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mercier Press
• Release date: Jul 19, 2019
• ISBN: 9781781175897

James Durney

James Durney is a graduate of NUI Maynooth and an award-winning author of twenty-two books on Irish history. He works in Co. Kildare's Local Studies, Genealogy and Archives Department, based in Newbridge Library, and was Historian in Residence for Co.Kildare’s Decade of Commemorations Committee from 2015 to 2017.