Robert Barton : A Remarkable Revolutionary

Robert Barton, A Remarkable Revolutionary is a most welcome biography of Robert Childers Barton (1881-1975). Wicklow-born Barton was one of the most enigmatic figures to emerge from the Irish Revolution.  Barton’s Anglo-Irish background and upbringing was different to the majority of his revolutionary contemporaries. Yet once committed to the cause of Irish independence he gave it his all. Barton was one of the plenipotentiaries who travelled to London for the Anglo-Irish Treat negotiations and although he signed that treaty and voted for it in the Dail, he subsequently took the anti-treaty side in the Civil War.  After his retirement from politics in 1923 he practiced as a barrister and a judge.  He later became chairman of the Agricultural Credit Corporation, holding this office for twenty years from the bank’s foundation in 1934.  This biography provides an insightful overview of the formation of the Irish State and the part which Barton played in it.