Tom Kettle

Born in Dublin on February 9, 1880, Tom Kettle was an Irish journalist, barrister, economist, writer, soldier, and Home Rule politician. He came from a deeply nationalist family, studied at University College Dublin, and went on to serve as Member of Parliament for East Tyrone from 1906 to 1910.

Kettle wrote on politics and public life, but he is often remembered most vividly for his poetry and for the complicated path his beliefs took during the years before and during the First World War. He joined the Irish Volunteers in 1913 and later served in the British Army, a choice that made him a controversial figure in Irish history.

He was killed in action in France on September 9, 1916, during the Battle of the Somme. That early death, along with the honesty and emotion of poems such as those written near the end of his life, helped secure his lasting place in Irish literary and political memory.