Ourselves Alone is the third volume of The Green Flag, Robert Kee’s monumental three-part history of Irish nationalism, unlikely to be superseded as the most comprehensive and lucid study available.

          Volume Three is concerned with the modern growth of that extreme Irish republicanism which won freedom from British rule for twenty-six counties in Ireland in 1921, and which today pursues the same goal for all Ireland in the remaining six. The narrative begins with the aftermath of the Dublin rebellion of 1916. It describes how the aims of the unrepresentative few who brought about that rebellion came to be accepted, with some misgivings, by the majority of people in Ireland. It tells in detail the story of the so-called War of Independence of 1920-21, of the Anglo-Irish treaty, of the split in the I. R. A. and of the Civil War that followed, leading to the compromise of 1925 which was to be blown apart in our own day.