Continuing on in my novel, West Belfast, which deals with the rise of the IRA post-August 1969, here is Chapter Eight, titled, The Honeymoon Period. “You’re wrong!” said Dominic. “You’ve got it entirely wrong.” The men were in the upstairs bedroom of a supporter’s...

In 2002, my fifth book, a memoir, All The Dead Voices, was published. The book is currently out-of-print and I have sometimes thought about updating it but never got around to doing so. Anyway, the short Prologue to the book is a reminiscence on August 1969 when,...

Chapter 7, The Pogroms, of my first novel, West Belfast, covers this period from fifty years ago when thousands of people were burnt out of their homes in the Falls Road and Divis Street area. Click on link to download PDF. Chapter 7 The book can be purchased at the...

The research in this feature is the latest update from Dan Dowling of Shannonwatch. Compiling records of military aircraft identifies British Army surveillance. This map  shows seven days of all military aircraft around the world. Each dot on the map yileds the ICAO...

In West Belfast (and other nationalist areas) the tradition of bonfires celebrating the Feast of the Assumption on Our Lady’s Day, 15th August, lasted about one hundred years, and it was something we, as kids, looked forward to. But there were no nationalist bonfires...

Former SDLP deputy leader Seamus Mallon has come out against Irish reunification as proposed by the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, based on a democratic vote of the people in the North, thus reversing what he and the SDLP preached for forty years. Of course, Mallon...

Coming back from visiting my granddaughter (and great granddaughters) in North Belfast at the weekend when I bumped into the indefatigable Mary Clarke (nee Doyle) out canvassing with other women in Ardoyne who are working on Mary’s campaign for re-election to Belfast...

The following feature is reprinted with the permission of Culture Matters and associate editor, Jenny Farrell, who reviews A History of Irish Working-Class Writing edited by Michael Pierse and published by Cambridge University Press, 2018. THIS book is to be greatly...

Dan Dowling is a member of Shannonwatch, a group of peace and human rights activists and monitors, who hold monthly protest vigils at Shannon airport against the use of that airport for rendition-linked flights by the US military and for stopovers on their way to wars...