The diaries make little mention of momentous events. The dates between the signing of the Treaty on December 6th and December 10th 1921 go unmarked as does the meeting of the First Dáil in January 1919, the death of his good friend Terence MacSwiney on hunger strike in October 1920, the burning of the Custom House in May 1921 and the signing and ratification of the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1921 and January 1922. The Apollo 11 mission record starts, appropriately, with Chapter 11 and takes from here until the end of the book. The training regimes, different for Collins who would remain on the Command Module and Armstrong and Aldrin who would take the LM, are detailed from here on as are minute details such as the design of the mission patch to big issues such as Collins noting on launch that Armstrong’s clothing was uncomfortably near the abort handle, to the landing of Eagle and Collin’s attempts to spot the LM whilst orbiting all are well told. As the 1st mission to land on the moon the 6-week quarantine period after landing is also recorded though Collins is suitably sceptical to its efficacy if they had been contaminated by moon bugs. The Apollo 11 mission is fascinating in the telling as well as the fact. A detailed knowledge of Collins’ world is necessary to fill in the gaps. Numbers feature widely in the book. Collins started out his adult life as a bank clerk and the diaries for 1919 and 1920 are replete with references given to him of the money handed over by members of the public for the Dáil loan.

The Gemini 10 mission he flies along with John Young is covered in every breathtaking detail, none more so than Collins' 2 EVAs (Extra Vehicular Activity - spacewalks to you and I). In the first, as he was taking star readings with his sextant whilst standing up in the hatch - head and shoulders out 'there' in space - he writes that he felt at that moment "like a Roman god riding the skies in his chariot". The 2nd EVA, where he has to leave the Gemini altogether and cross the void to reach the adjacent Agena craft (sent up previously specifically for this planned rendezvous), for the purposes of removing and replacing an experiment installed on its outside, is altogether more terrifying. He finds himself grappling with zero gravity while attempting to 'climb' aboard the rear end of a craft patently not designed for such an activity (there were no foot or handholds for his convenience) in bulky spacesuit complete with cumbersome gloves and yards of entangling umbilical line... There is no 'up' and there is no 'down' - talk about vertigo! All this while simultaneously reminding the Gemini pilot Young not to use whichever thruster may happen to be nearest to burning through either said umbilical lines or indeed Collins himself! It's edge of your seat stuff. Two of the five diaries are Collins’ Gentlemen’s Diaries which would have amused their owner as the British press portrayed him as an unscrupulous gangster and murderer until he entered the door of Downing Street for the Anglo-Irish Treaty negotiations and then he became a big celebrity. Tom Kelleher, north on the road close to the bridge nearest the Crookstown direction, heard the sound of vehicles and looked around. Believing that Tom Hales was trapped, he yelled to Jim Hurley, his comrade, ‘Better fire a few shots! Hales is at the barricade, he’ll be destroyed!’Collins receives an award for aviation from Vice President Al Gore in 1999 at a ceremony at the National Air and Space Museum. Fellow Apollo 11 astronauts Armstrong (left) and Aldrin also were honored at the event marking the 30th anniversary of the first moon landing.

That man who, after some persuasion, agreed to give his version of the story, was Jim Kearney. I became determined to continue investigating the death of Michael Collins and abandon my original intention of writing a book on guerrilla activities in West Cork. I have interviewed many of the ambush participants, helped by the fact that they trusted me. This brought the story to life for me and, I hope, for my readers. The author grew up in South London and its a book about the white working class over a few generations from that part of London. After spending so much time with the CSM, Collins felt compelled to leave his mark on it, so during the second night following their return from the Moon, he went to the lower equipment bay of the CM and wrote:Michael Collins is multilingual. He communicates in written English supremely well. How many men and women ‘of letters’ possess a comparable ability to express themselves in the fields and languages of science and engineering? It’s a rare combination. Collins is also a remarkably modest man, blessed with both a firm sense of responsibility and the most wonderful dry sense of humour. He is a true team player, but, importantly, one whose maturity, skills and talents fully justify his personal sense of worth and purpose. this time another theory was developing: could Gogarty have been in London and hosted a meal at the restaurant for his friend Collins? I am not a Londoner, I was born and grew up just outside the M25. But I grew up on council estates that were peopled mostly by ex-Londoners, as were my parents. My elder siblings were all born in London. I used to think of London as my city. As one of the “reluctant” negotiators of the Anglo-Irish treaty, Collins could be either forensic or belligerent depending on the circumstances, although the choreography of reaching the deal in December 1921 might have been teased out more by the authors. Collins was a “formidable” politician, constantly calculating but not a team player and prone to melodrama. What he actually believed is difficult to discern and strangely neglected by his biographers. Since his death he has been recruited to countless causes, but he was not a deep thinker. He was derivative in his meanderings on the idea of an Irish “nation” and aped the sentimental mush about the western seaboard beloved of his generation despite all the guff pedalled about Collins as the great “moderniser”. Days in the Life: Reading the Michael Collins Diaries 1918-1922 is being published by the Royal Irish Academy in time for the centenary of Collins death which occurs on August 22nd this year. The pair write in the foreword to their latest book that the diaries are “radically different to the other sources of Michael Collins life. They bring us closer, closer than ever maybe, to the bustle of his life”.

Kiinnostavaa kyllä, Apollo 11:sta kyytiin päästään vasta sadan viimeisen sivun aikana. Collinsin tehtävänä oli kiertää maapalloa Columbia-komentomoduulissa samaan aikaan kun Neil Armstrong ja Buzz Aldrin laskeutuivat kuun pinnalle. Hän toteaa olleensa varsin tyytyväinen tilanteeseen ja tunteneensa olevansa merkittävä osa kuulentoa, ja kuvailee varsin kiehtovasti tunnetta, jossa kuun toisella puolella on kolme miljardia ihmistä plus kaksi, ja toisella vain hän itse. Jokaisella kierroksella maan ympäri hän menetti 48 minuutin ajaksi yhteyden komentokeskukseen. (s. 402-403). He was famously busy and equally well-organised. Collins was noted for his ability to remember minute details, but even he baulked at his workload from time to time. Classic propaganda. You want to depict your fallen leader as beyond pure, generous even in death. We forget the ordinariness of what happened. He was foolhardy to stop and return fire. There was drink taken. Mistakes made that seem obvious in retrospect.”

How to Vote

Softcover. Michael Collins was Command Module Pilot on the Apollo 11 mission that brought the first humans onto the surface of our moon. - - With a Foreword by Charles A. Lindbergh. - - For more than a decade, the world watched man hurtling into space, experiencing new dimensions, walking where no one had gone before, and we asked: "What's it like up there?" Michael Collins, the Gemini 10 and Apollo 11 astronaut, answers the question. In this remarkable book, he captures, in a very personal way, the drama, beauty, and humor of one of man's greatest adventures: Collins may well become the Saint-Exupery of space flight. - Carrying the Fire is a pilot's odyssey in which Collins traces his development from his first flight experiences in the Air Force, through his days as a test pilot, to his flight in the incredibly complex Apollo 11. He presents an evocative picture of the joys of flight - the union of man, technology, and the elements. - The description of the testing that aspiring astronauts must undergo is as fascinating as that of his later education, which included navigation, geology, and jungle survival. He describes the Houston space Community, and details the preparation and testing of the Gemini and Apollo spacecraft and their support Systems - making complex technical material easily comprehensible. He also gives candid portraits of his fellow astronauts: Armstrong, Aldrin, Stafford, Shepard, Borman, Glenn, and others. - Collins's account of the Gemini 10 mission belies the theory that astronauts are automatons at the mercy of ground control. His space walk carries the reader into a bizarre and alien environment. - Following Gemini 10, Collins was assigned to the crew of Apollo 11 for the first manned moon landing, probably the most closely watched event in the history of man. In Carrying the Fire Collins takes us with him to the moon, but in a way other accounts have never done. - The concluding chapter tells how space flight has altered Collins's perceptions - his senses of time, light, and movement have changed as a result of his seeing a fragile earth from a great distance. Our world and his have gained a new perspective, one not likely to be forgotten. 488 p. cover a little damaged, with a dedication to the previous owner. Coogan emphasises that it is essentially a reheat of portions of his hugely influential 1990 biography, Michael Collins. That pioneering though controversial work made innovative use of Bureau of Military History statements and other material then in private hands. (The bureau records were opened to the public only in 2003, and the enormous military-service-pensions archive only in 2014. Both are accessible online at militaryarchives.ie.) Once the fighting ended, men such as James Doyle, a heroic survivor of Clanwilliam House in 1916, whose “indomitable and cool courage” apparently saved the day for his IRA comrades in 28 Upper Fitzwilliam Street on Bloody Sunday, went on to lead quiet, steady lives. (His son the late Col ED Doyle was, for many years, a measured and perceptive commentator on international affairs for this newspaper.) A small aside about the humor in the book; there is a footnote regarding radio procedures among fighter pilots that is simply one of the funniest things that I've ever read. How many footnotes have ever made you laugh aloud? I read the book (in one sitting, I might add, and yes -- it's that good) while occupying a booth next to a plate-glass window in a tavern during an afternoon of mixed thundershowers and blasting sunlight. When I read that particular bon mot, I roared, causing the other customers to stare and the waitress to bring me a glass of water and ask if I were all right. Dr Murphy and Dr Dolan explain the absence of many important events as being the logical extension of his mind. Collins wrote down the things he might forget not the ones he knew he could not forget. “He knew he had signed the Treaty. He did not need to write it down,” they state.