Enigma

Charles Stewart Parnell is the most enigmatic figure in Irish history. An Anglo-Irish landlord from a distinguished and longestablished Wicklow family, he became the most unlikely leader of Irish nationalism imaginable.He hated the colour green. He was not a dynamic speaker. He was cold and aloof and lacked the popular touch. None the less, from the late 1870s until his fall and death in 1891, he held the whole of Ireland spellbound. He established Home Rule for Ireland — previously a taboo subject in British politics — at the centre of Westminster affairs and effectively created the modern Irish state in embryo.