Dying for Ireland: The Prison Memoirs of Roger Casement

Dying for Ireland is the remarkable true story of the last man to be executed by a Western democracy primarily for being gay. Roger Casement was one of the most famous men in the world a century ago, yet is virtually unknown today, his story long suppressed by British authorities who considered him a traitor and Irish partisans who refused to accept his homosexuality. As a British consul in Africa and South America, Casement uncovered genocidal abuse of enslaved rubber plantation workers, and forced the world to pay attention. In retirement, he was a leading figure in the Irish nationalist movement, and hatched an ill-conceived plot to secure German support for the Easter Rising. Casement was captured after a U-boat abandoned him on the Irish shore, and convicted of high treason -- the most notorious and despised traitor to Britain of World War One. An international clemency movement, including everyone from William Randolph Hearst to the Pope, from African villagers to the U.S. Senate, demanded that Britain spare the life of the beloved humanitarian, mentally and physically debilitated by a lifetime of service in the tropics. The movement suddenly collapsed when the British Government began secretly circulating copies of Casement's private diaries, detailing an active gay sex life. Casement was hung at Pentonville Prison, London, on August 3, 1916, at the age of 51. Based on Casement's diaries and correspondence, Dying for Ireland is a fictional memoir of an ordinary man who made himself a hero. Fearless explorer, tireless human rights crusader, Irish patriot - Roger Casement confronted the world's most dangerous men on three continents, and won every battle but the last.