His death there in October 1920 after 74 days on hunger strike[3] brought him and the Irish Republican campaign to international attention.

Following the failure of this business, John emigrated to Australia in 1885 leaving Terence and the other children in the care of their mother and the eldest daughter.

[6] MacSwiney's mother, Mary (née Wilkinson), was an English Catholic with strong Irish nationalist opinions.

Terence was educated by the Christian Brothers at the North Monastery school in Cork city but left at fifteen to help support the family.

He continued in full-time employment while he studied at Queen's College, Cork, graduating from the Royal University with a degree in Mental and Moral Science in 1907.

She was from a rich brewing family in Cork with conservative politics, but in 1915 she became a member of the Gaelic League and Cumann na mBan.

[11] In April 1916, he was intended to be second in command of the Easter Rising in Cork and Kerry, but stood down his forces on the order of Eoin MacNeill.

[11] Following the rising, MacSwiney was imprisoned until December 1916 in Reading and Wakefield Gaols by the British Government, under the Defence of the Realm Act.

In February 1917, he was deported from Ireland and imprisoned in Shrewsbury and Bromyard internment camps until his release in June 1917.

In November 1917, MacSwiney was arrested in Cork for wearing an Irish Volunteers uniform, and, inspired by the example of Thomas Ashe, went on a hunger strike for three days prior to his release.

[13] In the 1918 general election, MacSwiney was returned unopposed as the member for Mid Cork, representing Sinn Féin, succeeding the Nationalist MP D. D. Sheehan.

However, along with 27 other elected members, MacSwiney joined the first Dáil Éireann rather than take up his seat in the UK Parliament.

[13] MacSwiney's family planned on having his body taken to Dublin but fearing large-scale demonstrations, the authorities diverted his coffin directly to Cork, reportedly on the insistence of Sir Henry Wilson, 1st Baronet.

His collected works, prose, plays and poetry, The Art and Ideology of Terence MacSwiney: Caught in the Living Flame, were published in 2023.

[21] On 1 November 1920, the Catalan organization CADCI held a demonstration in Barcelona, where the poet and politician Ventura Gassol delivered an original poem extolling MacSwiney.

His portrait, and a painting of his funeral mass, by Sir John Lavery, are exhibited in Cork's Crawford Art Gallery.