The Centenary Classics series examines the fascinating time of change and evolution in the Ireland of 100 years ago during the 1916-23 revolutionary period. Each volume is introduced by Fearghal McGarry who sets the scene of this important period in Ireland's history. Rising Out tells the story of Brigadier Sean Connolly, O/C of the Longford Brigade, who was fatally wounded in action on 11 March 1921 at Selton Hill, near Mohill (Co. Leitrim), by British forces during the War of Independence. Comdt-General Ernie O'Malley came across the story in interviews with Tan and Civil War survivors in the early 1950s. The account makes Connolly come alive as a person - his schooling, love of music, education, farming family background and devotion to the nationalist cause. O'Malley, who had actually organised the Irish Volunteers in parts of the area and had known many of the local leaders, gives the social setting for the IRA activities and explains the subtle roles of the IRA General HQ, of the Catholic Church and the Anglo-Irish gentry. Most memorably, he describes in detail what the fighting men actually did locally and what a local leader had to do in order to organise his men.The introduction by his son, Cormac K. H. O'Malley, explains how this memoir came into existence and describes his father's role during the revolutionary period.

`Nobody's Business': The Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley presents new insights into the contradictions and complexities of the mind of Ernie O'Malley, one of mid-twentieth century Ireland's foremost cultural critics. In 1941, 1955 and 1956, the former revolutionary leader and author of the acclaimed memoir of the War of Independence, On Another Man's Wound, visited the Aran Islands. While on the islands, O'Malley kept diaries recounting his daily conversations and interactions with other visitors and islanders including Elizabeth Rivers, with whom he stayed on one occasion, Charles Lamb and Sean Keating. The diaries, devoid of sentiment and often highly critical, reveal his views on art, literature, history and contemporary Irish life and international affairs as well as his thoughts on the economic, religious and daily life of the Aran islanders. His unvarnished observations on the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of life in post-Independence Ireland make his diaries absorbing and provocative. Edited with introductory essays by Cormac O'Malley and Roisin Kennedy and an afterword by Luke Gibbons, `Nobody's Business': The Aran Diaries of Ernie O'Malley offers fascinating insights into the mind and opinions of a key figure in Irish cultural nationalism.

For the first time in published form 'The Men Will Talk to Me: Galway Interviews' chronicles the experiences of the Galway-based survivors of the War of Independence and the Civil War, recorded in the hand-written notebooks of Ernie O'Malley. Many of the individuals would not talk about their experiences, even to their own families, but were willing to talk to Commandant General O'Malley, the senior surviving Republican military commander, who took on the task of preserving the memories of these participants. The resulting O'Malley notebooks provide an unrivaled insight into this important period of Irish history, including the attack on Clifden and life 'on the run' for the Galway IRA volunteers.

On Another Man's Wound, O'Malley's account of his experiences during Ireland's War of Independence, was first published to instant acclaim in 1936 and was followed by his account of his experiences in the Civil War in The Singing Flame. O'Malley had reported directly to Michael Collins and Richard Mulcahy during the War of Independence and was appointed OC of the Second Southern Division, the second largest division of the IRA. When the Treaty with Britain was signed on 6 December 1921, diehard Republicans like O'Malley would not accept it. In the bitter Civil War that followed, O'Malley was in the Four Courts when it was attacked by the Free State army. Later he was OC of the Republicans in Ulster and Leinster. He was eventually captured and imprisoned until July 1924. He was one of the last Republican prisoners to be released. The Free Staters had won and O'Malley, feeling there was no place for him in this new Ireland, went to live in the USA where he wrote his memoirs.

Ernie O'Malley was one of the leading fighters in the 'people's war' - as he called it - against the British campaign in Ireland 1920-21. Those were the guerilla days when small groups of poorly-armed Irish Volunteers, the Irish Republican Army, whose military training was for the most part elemental, fought to achieve the aims of 1916 as endorsed emphatically through the general election of 1918: freedom from foreign rule. O'Malley was an Irish Republican Army officer during the Irish War of Independence and a senior commander of the anti-treaty IRA during the Irish Civil War and wrote three books about his experiences, On Another Man's Wound, The Singing Flame, and Raids and Rallies. Raids and Rallies, written while still fresh in the mind and memory, is O'Malley's account of some of the offensives in Tipperary, Roscommon, Clare and Mayo. He took part in three, the attacks on Hollyford, Drangan and Rearcross RIC barracks and had first-hand knowledge of the others including those at Rineen, Scramogue, Tourmakeady, Modreeny, Kilmeena and Carrowkennedy.

More than any other book of the period, On Another Man's Wound captures the feel of Ireland the way people lived, their attitudes and beliefs and paints brilliant cameo sketches of the great personalities of the Rising and the War. Like many of the Irish, O'Malley was largely indifferent to the attempts to establish an independent Ireland until the Easter Rising of 1916. As the fight progressed his feelings changed and he joined the Irish Republican Army.