Jailbreak opens with Irish Republican Brotherhood president James Stephens’ relatively simple escape from Dublin’s Richmond Prison in 1865 and culminates in the far more elaborate — and violent — mass republican escape from Long Kesh in 1983.

Written in a fast-paced and easily comprehensible manner, with the inclusion of a range of accompanying images, the book will appeal to those with a general interest in Irish republican history.

The work draws on a range of newspaper material, witness statements and pension applications from the Military Archives and a number of interviews. It would, however, have benefitted from a greater engagement with recent scholarly work on Irish political imprisonment and with a broader range of archival material.

Durney covers the escapes of well-known figures such as Éamon de Valera, Ernie O’Malley and Frank Aiken as well as including escapes from periods of republican history, such as the Emergency and the Border Campaign, which have received less attention. In doing so, he links each generation of republican prisoners to their predecessors.

The inclusion of the escape of four female prisoners from Dublin’s Mountjoy Prison in 1921 is particularly welcome. If the history of political imprisonment in Ireland has received insufficient attention, the history of female incarceration has received less still. The inclusion of the tale of this escape will hopefully encourage the reader to delve further into the fascinating lives of the women involved.

At times, Durney overly romanticises the jailbreak and its accompanying violence — though he highlights how the elation of escape was often short-lived and frequently resulted in swift re-capture.

Durney highlights the simplicity of some escapes, and the complexity of planning required in others: from keys fashioned using wax imprints, objects hidden in baked goods, makeshift rope ladders thrown over walls and tunnels doggedly carved into the earth, to the infamous escape from Mountjoy by helicopter in 1973.

Throughout, Durney focuses on the determination of the prisoners and, often, the laxity of the jailors.

The breadth of escapes covered within this concise, highly-readable work offers the general reader an engaging insight into over a century of republican history.

Jailbreak: Great Irish Republican Escapes, 1865–1983 by James Durney. Published by Irish Academic Press, 264pp.