So much has been written about the Easter Rising, and subsequent War of Independence, that you'd imagine little more can be added to the tale at this stage. Joe Good's 1996 memoir, however - republished ahead of next year's centenary of the Rising - certainly does that, both in terms of factual detail and adding texture and colour to this seismic event in our history.

With that title, and the subtitle 'A First-Hand Account', the reader knows what to expect: an eye-witness report from one who was there. This type of Irish history book isn't quite unique - Dan Breen and others have written similar bird's eye accounts of the revolution - but it is highly uncommon. And personally, this is the first one I've read which takes us right into the heart of events in Easter 1916.

Artist Robert Ballagh writes, in a new introduction to the book, that the Rising was carried out by "exceptional people who had a vision". And Joe Good was surely an exceptional man. (Having said that, by the account of his son, Maurice, who encouraged Joe to write his memoirs decades later and edited them into book form, he was also modest and unassuming; one imagines he would be embarrassed at a compliment like that. Maurice describes his father as "a streetwise Cockney youth who distrusted heroics".)

Born in Soho in 1895, his Irish heritage was uncertain - Joe's mother was called Spencer - but he always felt Irish. And that, coupled with vaguely socialist ideals and a hatred of British imperialism, was enough for him to join Ireland's cause. Chance meetings with the Gaelic League and Irish nationalist agitators in England laid the fire; conscription and the insane mass slaughter of the Great War caused it to leap into flames. Joe joined the Irish Volunteers around the same time as Michael Collins - his lifelong friend "Mick" - and travelled to Ireland, coming under the leadership of the famed Kimmage Garrison, under Count Plunkett.

Preparations for the Rising were both farcical and inspiring. Farcical because the rebels' numbers were so small - a few thousand men and women nationwide, at best - and they had hardly any munitions. German attempts to land arms were half-hearted and mostly unsuccessful; Joe recalls how the Kimmage lads (mostly non-Irish born, like himself) had to forge their own bayonets and even bullets.

But inspiring, too, precisely because of that. Even at the time, Joe realised that their chances of success were very slim, almost non-existent; yet these men and women persisted, compelled by varying dreams: of Irish liberty, anti-Imperialism, the chance to be part of something larger than themselves. Whether one agrees with them or not in the abstract - I despair when I read of young men driven to war by quixotic visions of "glory on the battlefield" - their single-mindedness, idealism and self-sacrifice are worthy of respect.

Soon we are in the thick of things, as Easter week 1916 begins and the Irish nation is born, or soon will be. The latter part of this book focuses on the aftermath of the Rising: Joe's time in British internment camps, the War of Independence, Collins' vicious and brilliant guerrilla warfare - it paints a fully rounded, fascinating portrait of this complex man - and finally the Treaty and, inevitably, a split into "pro" and "anti" factions. (Interestingly, Joe's memoirs end just on the cusp of the Civil War; he couldn't write about that awful period, he couldn't think about it. After all the sacrifice and horror, this admirably practical-minded, reasonable man was clearly unable to even countenance the senselessness of that fratricidal nightmare.)

But the book's centrepiece, and finest part, is a vivid, almost "camera vérité" account of the Rising itself. From the taking of several strategically important locations on the Monday, to the surrender of Pearse and the other leaders on Saturday, Joe brings us through the whole thing, with a clarity and immediacy that can be almost physically felt.

This is the closest thing, I suppose, to newspaper articles written by "embedded" reporters - except, of course, in this case the reporter isn't just riding along with the soldiers, he is one. All the things that make war such a horrendously unforgettable experience are captured: chaos, destruction, dirt, cold, boredom, angst, doubt, noise, terror, pain, anger. Even some finer feelings are here: thoughts of poetry, friendship and common decency drift across Joe's mind from time to time.

Perhaps strongest of all - this seems simultaneously counter-intuitive and perfectly understandable - are feelings of hunger and tiredness. War is exhausting. By the end, you feel, they were nearly happy to surrender, if only because it would mean taking a rest. Within this centrepiece, Russian-doll style, is another centrepiece, a truly gripping account of the rebels escaping from the GPO as British forces fire on them. They struggle from street to street, door to door, some making it and some dying. Finally they (and we) hole up in a small house off 'Sackville' Street, hidden by a Dublin family not screechingly hostile to the Rising, as many of their neighbours were.

Those pages reminded me of a scene in the sci-fi film Children of Men, which may sound odd but it makes sense. In the film, a group led by Clive Owen make their way through a bombed-out warzone as bullets fly, shells explode and death lurks everywhere, ready to pounce out at random. The entire scene is filmed in one breathtakingly accomplished tracking shot; I got the same sort of feeling here, as we the readers make that burst for freedom alongside the rebels.

Apart from the obvious - insider knowledge of what really happened and how it happened - what sets this book over other histories is the quality of Joe Good's writing. He was very well-read, and the narrative is lightly sprinkled with quotations from, or references to, a host of authors: everyone from Shakespeare and Byron to Walter Scott and WB Yeats.

And the apple didn't fall from the tree: his son's epilogue ends with a quote from Yeats' 'The Circus Animals' Desertion': "and yet when all is said, it was the dream itself enchanted me."

It's a suitably appropriate - for all kinds of reasons - sign-off to a remarkable man and an unusually engrossing, thoughtful wartime memoir.

Inside the GPO 1916; Joe Good; O'Brien Press, pbk, 301p, €11.99

Available with free P&P on www.kennys.ie

Darragh McManus's Young Adult novel, Shiver the Whole Night Through, is out now

Indo Review