Read Ireland Book News - Issue 49
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The Informer: The Real Story of One Man's War Against Terrorism by Sean O'Callaghan (Hardback; 19.10 IRP / 30.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
In 1988 IRA terrorist Sean O'Callaghan walked into a Tunbridge Wells police station and gave himself up. Two years later, in a Belfast courtroom, he pleaded guilty to all charges of which he was accused and received a sentence of 539 years. Since being a teenager he had been an active member of the IRA and had risen to be the head of their Southern Command. He was responsible for two murders and many terrorist attacks. He was a lynchpin of the organisation.
But only eight years later, in 1996, he was released from prison by royal prerogative. For fourteen years he had been the most highly placed informed within the IRA and had fed the Irish police force with countless pieces of valuable information. He prevented the assassination of the Prince and Princess of Wales at a London theatre; he sabotaged operations, explained strategy and caused the arrests of many IRA members. He has done more than any individual to unlock the code of silence that governs the IRA's members, and has in effect made it possible to fight the war against the terrorists. Under constant threat of IRA revenge, he now works ceaselessly for peace in Ireland.
This book is Sean O'Callaghan's life story. It is the story of a life lived under the constant threat of discovery and its fatal consequences.
Belmont Castle or, Suffering Sensibility by Theobald Wolfe Tone (Paperback; 7.99 IRP/ 12.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Among the possessions seized from Theobald Wolfe Tone upon his arrest in 1798 were two copies of Belmont Castle, the epistolary novel he wrote and published with his friends Richard Jebb and John Radcliffe in 1790. Much more than a mere youthful literary squib, Belmont Castle is an elaborate roman-a-clef, satirising the lives of several prominent figures of the Anglo-Irish establishment and redressing a painful love affair from Tone's past. Written in a style that mocks the popular sentimental fiction of the period, this novel gives the reader a xenophobic Lord Charlemont, a foppish Sir Thomas Goold, a social-climbing William 'Index' Ball and 'Humanity' Dick Martin as one of several villains in a frothy tale of love and intrigue, abductions and duels, dances and dandies, blushing belles and charging rams.
In a tour de force of scholarly recovery, editor Marion Deane's introduction and annotations guide us through a labyrinth of truth, half-truth and innuendo. Deane shows that Tone composed more than half of the novel, and that the love affairs at the centre of the plots are based on Tone's own infatuation with Lady Elizabeth Vesey, and on Lady Vesey's subsequent celebrated adultery and elopement with a Mr Petrie. This novel is at once an amusing mock-Gothic novel and a fascinating historical document, shedding new light on the lives of the great and the good of Anglo-Irish Dublin in the period of 'Grattan's parliament', and on Tone himself in the years before he entered revolutionary politics.
Women and Politics in Contemporary Ireland: From the Margins to the Mainstream by Yvonne Galligan (Paperback; 19.00 IRP / 29.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
As Ireland made the transition from a rural to a post-industrial society, from the 1970s onwards, women in Ireland developed a significant political voice. Long excluded from participation in the civic arena, they organised to make new, challenging and specific demands on government. The relationship between feminist representatives and political decision makers is at the core of this book, which shows how Irish women developed the effective political skills required to represent women's interests to government. The author demonstrates that the political activity of the women's movement in the Republic of Ireland contributed to the dismantling of a range of discriminatory policies against women, and she discusses the compromises made by both sides as the political system slowly moved to accommodate the feminist agenda. Thus, the dynamics of Irish politics are explored from a perspective that is different from, yet complementary to, the standard institutional approach to studies of the Irish political system. This book clearly marks the significant points in the creation of a more women-friendly society in Ireland from the 1970s to the present day. It is the story of women's rights in contemporary Ireland.
Ulster Loyalism and the British Media by Alan Parkinson (Paperback; 14.95 IRP / 22.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
The growing body of research into Ulster's 'loyalism' has tended to focus on its political nature, rather than the manner in which it has been presented in the British media. This is where this study differs from previous works. It examines not only the manifestations of such 'loyalism', but also considers the 'messages' disseminated by Unionist propagandists and their effects on British political policy. However, the book's essence is in its analysis of media representations of Ulster's Protestant community, including a case study investigation into the 1987 Enniskillen bombing. It also presents the results of the first survey of British public opinion regarding the unionist case. Utilising a wide variety of press reports and transcripts of television documentaries covering the last 30 years, this book provides unprecedented analysis of British media coverage of Ulster unionism and suggests that there is a direct correlation between the paucity of such coverage and ongoing unionist marginalization.
The '98 Reader: An Anthology of Song, Prose and Poetry edited by Padraic O'Farrell (Paperback; 5.99 IRP / 9.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
This wide-ranging gathering of prose, poetry and song mirrors both sides of the conflict of 1798, orange and green, imperial and republican, from the early idealism of the 1782 Dungannon Convention to the final snuffing out of resistance in Wicklow in 1803. Here are the legendary ballads and verse accounts of the rebellion, familiar and little known, ranging from those by anonymous balladeers to works by John Keegan Casey, P.J. McCall, Thomas Moore, Thomas Davis, Alice Milligan, William Drennan, William Rooney and Ethna Carbery. These are supplemented by prose accounts by Theobalk Wolfe Tone, Charles Teeling, Robert Emmet, Jonah Barrington and Maria Edgeworth, and folk narratives from the archive of the Irish Folklore Department at University College, Dublin. This book is a delightful companion, recording - and celebrating - a pivotal moment in Ireland's history.
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