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One hundred years on, this detailed account spotlights the negotiations that led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty and provoked a civil warAt 3am on 3 December 1921, the mail steamer Cambria, on her maiden voyage between Holyhead and Kingstown, now Dún Laoghaire, struck a small boat off the coast of north Wales. The Cambria was slightly damaged, but the smaller boat was sliced almost in two, and three of her seven seamen lost. The Manchester Guardian reported that there was “great excitement among the passengers” when they were instructed to put on their life jackets, but the Irish Peace Conference delegation, who were also travelling on the Cambria, helped to reassure them. Michael Collins, the famous IRA director of intelligence and minister for finance in the Irish republican government, quipped to a crewman: “I have been in a tighter corner than this.” He was, the sailor told the Guardian, “the coolest man on board”.This is just a glimpse of the rich detail contained in Gretchen Friemann’s The Treaty, which takes the reader through every twist and turn of the negotiations a century ago that led to the signing of the Anglo-Irish Treaty on the night of 6 December 1921. The agreement brought an end to the Irish war of independence, but provoked in its place a civil war. Continue reading...