A new study of the Wolfe Tone is to be launched in St. Columb’s Hall in Derry this evening.

Wolfe Tone: Irish Jacobin is the first major biography of the founder of Irish republicanism in over twenty years.

Written by Kieran Allen, Emeritus Associate Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin, it takes a distinctly novel interpretation describing him as a ‘Jacobin’, a term used to describe radicals during the French Revolution. The new book will be launched at 6.30pm this evening.

The author notes that: “Tone underwent a dramatic political transformation in his relatively short life: from an elite playboy with colonial fantasies, into a radical Jacobin who advocated the unity of Catholics, Protestants, and Dissenters.

“Inspired by the French Revolution, he helped to build the United Irishmen into one of the largest revolutionary movements in Europe. Their rebellion of 1798 was crushed only through systematic terror, with more people murdered in Ireland than all of France during the ‘Reign of Terror’.”

Fittingly the book launch will take place in St. Columb’s Hall, only a few hundred metres from the old Derry gaol, a site which underlines Tone’s French connection.

Tone was captured by the British aboard the Hoche, French ship of the line after the Battle of Tory Island on October 12, 1798, in full revolutionary naval dress.

He was brought ashore at the old dock at Buncrana – today Cahir O'Doherty Avenue – before being held for a time at Derry gaol.

Tone was transported to Dublin where he was court-martialled and died in custody at the age of 35 on November 19, 1798.

The new political biography, Allen, explains, dispels the myths surrounding Tone’s life and politics.

"It challenges both nationalist accounts which often depict him as ‘coming over’ to the Catholic side and revisionist accounts which suggest that the ‘cult of Tone’ led to republican violence.

“Instead the book charts his political development as a revolutionary who, despite religious differences, placed trust in the ‘men of no property’ to break connections with England. His pioneering anti-sectarian vision remains as relevant as ever today,” he writes.

Publisher: Pluto Press, New Wing, Somerset House, Strand, London, WC2R 1LA; T: +44 (0) 208 348 2724 E: [email protected] Price: €17.99