People Massacred While Heath Sailed The Sea
I stood in front of the gates to his long driveway. The £5m house, inside a two-acre walled garden, was huge for a one-parent family (with no family), but I smirked with satisfaction at the fact that the council had forgotten to take down the sign.* When I was growing...
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‘Honest and Painful’
Andrée Murphy reviews the recently published memoir, Where Grieving Begins, by former IRA Volunteer Pat Magee, with a foreword by Jo Berry whose father was killed in the Brighton Bombing. It is published by Pluto Press. Pat was sentenced to multiple terms of life...
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REVIEW – Partition by Ivan Gibbons
This is my long review of Partition - How and Why Ireland was Divided by Ivan Gibbons which appeared in the Irish Examiner, May 1, 2021. ITS one hundredth birthday falls on May 3, yet no unionist or revisionist historian has ever written a book titled, The Success of...
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A Story of Revenge
24 April is Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day. Some years ago I wrote about one consequence of those mass killings for some of its perpetrators in my book, Rebel Columns. Here it is republished for the anniversary. A STORY OF REVENGE ‘They took everyone away… They...
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Say, Selective Vindictiveness
There have been several lucrative spin-offs for some of those behind the debacle that is Boston College’s Belfast Project, which included former IRA Volunteers being encouraged to incriminate themselves and old comrades on the understanding that their statements...
read moreWhy The Moon Travels
My review of Why The Moon Travels by Oein DeBhairduin* and illustrated by Leanne McDonagh has just been published in the Irish Examiner, 30 January, 2021. Here it is; This is a lovely book: lyrical, rich, full of wit, innocence and charm. They are the retelling of...
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Paramilitarism and the State
My review of Paramilitarism – Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State by Uğur Ümit Üngör was published in the Irish Examiner, 21 November. ONE night RUC Detective ‘Jonty’ Brown stopped a furniture lorry containing five men and a youth. Inside, a revolver and a...
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‘Inventory – A Family Portrait’ by Darran Anderson – book review
Inventory - A Family Portrait of Derry’s Troubled Past By Darran Anderson, Vintage, £8.99, 320pp My review in The Irish Examiner, 3 October, 2020 THERE have been many excellent memoirs written from the northern nationalist perspective. Among the best are Bernadette...
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‘The Tainted’ by Cauvery Madhavan – book review
The Tainted by Cauvery Madhavan, HopeRoad Publishing, £9.99 p/b, 336pp My review in The Irish Examiner, 19 September, 2020 WHERE is ‘home’? Cauvery Madhavan’s third novel transports us to India, 1920, and life for British soldiers based in the Nandagiri hillside...
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Dreams of the Everyday Housewife
Finished the brilliant Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell (publ.1959), a wry story about a suburban and dutiful American middle-class wife, Mrs India Bridge, before and after WWII, who is suffering from a sort of ‘Post-Traumatic Living Disorder’. Glen Campbell’s 1960s’...
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