ROLAND PHILIPPS was a leading publisher for many years. A Spy Named Orphan, his first book, arose from lifelong connections to Donald Maclean and his story. It was shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize 2018, was a Daily Mail Book of the Year and received widespread critical acclaim. His second book, Victoire, was published by The Bodley Head in 2021.
Casement is the Odysseus of Roland Philipp's epic, Broken
Archangel, and Philipps is a worthy chronicler. It is a book of
meticulous sensitivity and research ... It is a model, in other
words, for how to write a biography of a gay person who lived
before widespread acceptance
*Daily Telegraph*
Phillips is sympathetic to his subject and a careful chronicler of
diplomatic and intelligence intrigues … he makes a persuasive case
that Casement was a fractured personality who embraced causes to
fill an emotional void
*Guardian*
[An] extraordinary biography … Philipps [is] an accomplished
biographer with a knack for getting under the skin of his subjects
… There’s a wonderful immediacy to this portrait, as if Casement
sits in the room with us, discussing his life, revealing his
secrets
*The Times*
Remarkable ... Broken Archangel is an exceptionally well researched
and psychologically shrewd portrait of his deeply lonely
idealist
*Irish Independent *Best Books of 2024**
The chief virtues of Broken Archangel are its compact size and
energetic narrative. For the stranger to Casement’s life, this is
the book to buy
*Times Literary Supplement*
[An] authoritative and impressively clear-sighted biography ... A
vivid and striking portrait of this deeply conflicted man
*Irish Independent*
Vivid and compelling
*Irish Times*
Meticulous and sympathetic ... [a] fine book
*Literary Review*
[A] well-researched and engagingly narrated biography … For those
looking for an accurate, fluidly written account of Casement in his
own era, this biography is easy to recommend … [his] treason trial
are ably transformed into a page-turning finale
*History Today*
Roland Philipps' calm, authoritative and sympathetic new account
surely comes close to being definitive
*The Tablet*
This minutely researched, superbly written and genuinely exciting
biography explores and ultimately convincingly explains the
historical conundrum that was Sir Roger Casement. I can’t remember
turning the pages of a non-fiction book so eagerly to find out what
happened next, secure in the knowledge that with Roland Philipps I
was in the hands of a master-storyteller
*Andrew Roberts, author of Churchill*
One of the many outstanding things about this book is that Philipps
has managed to yoke together the extraordinarily disparate sides of
Roger Casement’s character into a comprehensible whole. In doing
so, he has rescued him from the ignominy to which he has been
unjustly consigned.
*John Preston, author of A Very English Scandal*
Patriot, human rights campaigner, knight of the realm, traitor.
Roger Casement was a complex,
appealing, deeply flawed man. In Roland Philipps, he has found the
biographer he deserves. This meticulous, sympathetic,
elegantly-written account gives one of the 20th century's most
controversial and tragic players the attention he deserves
*Michela Wrong, author of In the Footsteps of Mr Kurtz*
A superb portrait of an enigma. Roland Philipps has produced a
masterful biography, full of compassion and verve. In bringing
Casement to life, he has resurrected a figure who deserves to be
known as the first modern human rights campaigner, one who saved
countless lives and gave voice to those who could not be heard,
before being undone by some of his deepest and innermost divisions.
This is a vivid, poignant and hugely moving account of an
extraordinary life
*Henry Hemming, author of Agents of Influence*
Roland Philipps’s comprehensive, perceptive and sympathetic
biography does full justice to Casement’s odyssey from
dysfunctional Ulster boyhood, through imperial service campaigning
for exploited native workers, to his eventual execution as a
nationalist revolutionary. It is a rich and compulsively readable
treatment of the most extraordinary of Irish lives
*Roy Foster, Emeritus Professor of Irish History, University of
Oxford*
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