Who is Roger Casement?

Many knew of the slave system in King Leopold’s Congo rubber plantations– but British Consul Roger Casement was the first to make the world take notice. He created the 20th century's first international human rights movement, and was knighted for his work. Two years later, he was hung for treason, after an abortive plot to enlist German aid for Ireland’s Easter Rising. A widely-popular clemency movement had collapsed when Britain secretly circulated private diaries alleged to be Casement’s. Shocking if true, the diaries are still a matter of passionate contention, a century after Casement’s death.

Monday, August 29, 2016

Colm Tóibín reviews Mario Vargas Llosa's Casement biography

Like me, Tóibín was disappointed in Vargas Llosa's portrayal of Casement as a sexless, one-dimensional saint, and his difficult childhood as a leprechaun-movie dream of Irish myth. It's difficult to construct a recognizable human being out of Casement's biography if one writes out all the sexuality referenced in the "black diaries" and replaces it with nothing. 
Casement being led to his trial for high treason, 1916.


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