William Martin Murphy (1845–1919) was one of the most successful of Irish entrepreneurs and businessmen. As well as being a good employer, Murphy was an international financier, and a contractor of railways and tramways on three continents as well as in Britain and Ireland. He revolutionised the Irish newspaper industry, was a patriot who opposed concessions in the Home Rule Bill, supported Sinn Fein as a political party, and vigorously opposed conscription and partition. Although he was a man with a strong social conscience and sense of social responsibility, he came to be viewed as something of an ogre and regarded as the man who starved the workers of Dublin into submission in 1913–14 and who called for the execution of James Connolly in 1916. This book re-examines Murphy's remarkable career.
