"In Neil Jordan's film Michael Collins (1996), which drew enormous Irish audiences, Boland was winsomely played by the Irish American actor Aidan Quinn .Harry Boland died for 'the Republic', but Professor Fitzpatrick, in this superb biography, which now eclipses Tom Maher's useful Harry Boland: A biography (1998), does not see him as a purist ideologue. In fact, he is presented here above all as a 'movement man', determinde to perserve the internal cohesion of Irish republicanism. Fitzpatrick explicityly makes the connection with Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness in this context. In this account, Boland died not so much for an instransigent ideal, but because he simply miscaculated the conditions under which a face-saving unity of Sinn Fein wcouldbe preserved. Put another way, he underestimated Brish determination and ability to effect a split within the Irish nationalist leadership rather than grant further concessions."
"Fitzpatric's excellent book is based on extensive and original research, and Harry Boland emerges roundedly from its pages. Fitzpatrick is shrewdly aware that one needs to stress the honest idealism as well as the ruthless violence of Boland and his associates. Those associates included the front-rank leaders of the Irish republican movement (Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera amond them), and this very impressive study adds an important layer to our understnanding of how the revolutionaries operated. 'Without Harry Boland, ' Professor Fitzpatric suggest, 'the Irish revolution would undoubtedly have been less effective'. Such a judgment seems thoroughly justified by this closely argued study from which Boland emerges as a genuinely important figure. He typified and aggressive and ultimately unsatisfactory style of politics, and it is to Fitzpatrick's credit that he so successfullly re-creates that political world, and that he assesses it with such intelligence and meticulous professionalism. This is not the first biography of Harry Boland; but it is, without question, the best. It reflects Professor Fitzpatrick's remarkable skills as a researcher and as a fine historical writer, and it marks an extremely important additon to the shelves of books dealing with the history of modern Ireland."