The Battle of the Four Courts: Reconstruction draws from eye-witness testimonies, photographs and 3-D digital models

History: The Battle of the Four Courts, Michael Fewer, Head of Zeus, hardback, 310 pages, €24.99

A confetti of documents: The Four Courts explosion in June 1922 is remembered as a great act of cultural vandalism

On the morning of June 26, 1922, an IRA convoy led by Leo Henderson raided a car showroom in Dublin's Lower Baggot Street. As they tried to remove 16 vehicles and machinery worth £9,000, an army unit sent by Michael Collins' Provisional Government arrived in lorries and arrested them. One of the eye-witnesses was English journalist Clare Sheridan, who wrote afterwards that a man in the crowd had said to her: "Something'll sure happen soon; it's working up for a scrap!"

This turned out to be a bit of an understatement. Henderson's men had come straight from the Four Courts, which was being occupied by around 200 IRA troops implacably opposed to the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Just two days later, the Provisional Government began to shell them out, effectively firing the first shots in a civil war that would last 11 months and cost at least 1,500 lives.