Ernie O'Malley: IRA Intellectual by Richard English (Oxford, £12.99 in UK)

Ernie O'Malley was a daring guerilla leader and - as the title of this fine biography asserts - an intellectual. But he was no democrat. Although an admirer of Wolfe Tone, he lacked faith in the people. Despite Sinn Fein's 1918 victory, he maintained that had the IRA consulted the electorate, "we would never have fired a shot". A militaristic unwillingness to compromise resulted in the Civil War catastrophe. O'Malley went on to write a classic account of the War of Independence, On Another Man's Wound. His colourful if painful life reached summation with his divorced wife's desire to remarry him shortly before his death in 1957.