On 1 November 1920, eighteen-year-old UCD medical student Kevin Barry was hanged in Dublin’s Mountjoy Jail for his role in a bungled IRA operation in which three British soldiers were killed. Eunan O’Halpin, esteemed historian and grand-nephew of Kevin Barry, explores his ancestor’s short but significant life, the dynamics of growing up with ‘a martyr in the family’, and why Barry’s name has continued to resonate in Ireland and beyond.
