On 24 April 1916, as President of the Provisional Government, Patrick Pearse appeared under the GPO Grand Portico on Dublin's O'Connell Street and read aloud the Proclamation of the Irish Republic. Nine days later, he was the first of the rebel leaders to be executed.
Pearse was born in Dublin on 11 November 1879, to an English father and an Irish mother. Considered the face of the 1916 Easter Rising, for many he was also its heart. In this...