The Life and Times of James Connolly by C Desmond Greaves is the standard by which other accounts of the Irish revolutionary's days are measured.

James Connolly is Ireland's national hero. Trade union leader, socialist party organiser and founder of the working class Citizen Army he was a key leader of the 1916 Rising and was executed by the British.

This new edition, edited by Greaves' literary executor, Anthony Coughlan, is published in a partnership with Connolly Books in Dublin, the Connolly Association and Manifesto Press.

A new global readership committed afresh to the cause of Irish national independence will find it a vital tool in understanding the relationship between working class political power and the role of the working class in the struggle for national independence.

James Connolly's life and his writings acquire a new relevance as Britain's exit from the European Union highlights the complex conditions in which Ireland's struggle for national self determination takes new forms in the context of the supranational aspirations of the EU.