"We always talked of having a Rising, but, although we talked of it, we never realised that it was so near...For little more than a week before the Rising there was tremendous excitement - a sort of seething undercurrent. You felt that something was going to happen. But what it was, you did not know." Mary Josephine Ryan As we prepare for the launch of Surgeons & Insurgents , the RCSI's 1916 exhibition and lecture series, we are looking at statements from contemporary witnesses on what they remembered about the lead up to the Rising. To book your ticket for the exhibition and lecture series, see www.rcsi.ie/2016 . Free Entry, but booking required. From our school history books, we know that the Rebels took the British administration in Ireland and many Dublin citizens by surprise with their actions in Easter Week. But delving into the Bureau of Military History's online collection of witness statements about the months, weeks and days before...