“The bravest man it fell to my unhappy lot to execute.” These were the words of the hangman who took Roger Casement to the scaffold in Pentonville Prison in 1916.

Roger Casement’s final years were lived in pursuit of Irish independence. But was he a driver of rebellion or a hopeless romantic whose brainwaves did more harm than good? 

On Free State today, Rory Carroll talks about his book A Rebel and a Traitor about Casement and Reginald Hall, the man who pursued him.

He talks about the lover who betrayed Casement, why Irish prisoners of war in Germany didn’t trust him and the complicated legacy that persists to this day.

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