Kettle: Irish Orators and Oratory

Famous Irish Orators

Famous Irish Orators: Charles Stuart Parnell, Daniel O'Connell, Edmund Burke, John Philpot Curran and Henry Grattan. Taken from Kettle's Irish Orators and Oratory.

Famous Irish Orators

Famous Irish Orators

Famous Irish Orators: Charles Stuart Parnell, Daniel O'Connell, Edmund Burke, John Philpot Curran and Henry Grattan. Taken from Kettle's Irish Orators and Oratory.

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Thomas Michael Kettle (1880-1916)

Thomas Michael Kettle (1880-1916) was a nationalist, MP in the House of Commons and member of the Irish Parliamentary Party. He was also a poet, writer, and barrister, and was heavily involved with the Irish Volunteers. After Redmond ’s call for volunteers to help Britain in the First World War, he volunteered for service with an Irish regiment and entered the Royal Dublin Fusiliers in 1916. He was killed during the Battle of the Somme in September 1916.

Kettle gives an introduction to this volume, in which he celebrates the exciting nature of oratory and the gift of the orator. For Kettle, “passion, structure and beauty” are the three things that make a speech great.

In this volume, each chapter is dedicated to a famous Irish orator. Their addresses and declarations recorded here are given in full. The speeches twenty-three of some of the most significant names in Irish history are presented in this volume, including Henry Grattan, Robert Emmet, Daniel O’Connell, Theobald Wolfe Tone, Charles Stewart Parnell and John E. Redmond.

This is a fascinating collection, and would be a great source of reference to anyone with an interest in Irish history, from the eighteenth to early nineteenth century.