Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish — reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!

I reviewed the film Man Up, recommended by Tina. Tina reviewed Broken Harbor, the fourth book in the Dublin Murder Squad series by Tana French. Sim’s fantasy walk of the London Underground took her to Chelsea, with expensive property and literary history. Becky reviewed Season 1 of Lark Rise to Candleford and two books by British authors: The Sins of the Wolf and My Name is Not Friday. Jackie shared a photo of The Mailbox along the canal in Birmingham — and later updated the post to explain how it got that name.

Ireland is celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Easter Rising this weekend. Since Easter is early this year and was late in 1916, we’re still nearly a month away from the actual anniversary. I guess if an event has been called the Easter Rising for a hundred years, the resonance is more with the holiday than with the calendar date.

The diary of James Stephens, poet and novelist, about events of the Easter Rising as they happened

I read The Insurrection in Dublin by James Stephens, a free e-book on Kindle, during my flight to Ireland (and reviewed it when I got home). Written in a diary format, as the events unfolded, the book is not helpful for providing the historical context of the Easter Rising (try the Wikipedia article for that), but it proved very helpful as I walked around Dublin. I could see what happened in 1916 — soldiers in that building, rebels in that park, me walking down the street in between. Yikes! In reality, of course, I would have been hunkered down at home — sheltering in place, as we would say now.

Check out all the events listed in the Irish Mirror that we could attend if we were in Dublin for the anniversary observances.

What do  you know about the Easter Rising and how did you learn it?