Read Ireland Book Review
Issue 122
Bloody Sunday and the Rule of Law in Northern Ireland by Dermot P.J. Walsh (Paperback; 14.99 IEP / 22.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Drawing on original research into explosive evidence which had been concealed for 25 years, this book offers a devastating critique of the official Widgery Inquiry into the shooting of innocent and unarmed civilians by British soldiers on 30 January 1972 - 'Bloody Sunday'. The detailed and cogent exposition of how, and the extent to which, the rule of law was sacrificed in order to achieve the result desired by the political and security establishment is profoundly disturbing. Expert analysis of the relationship between law and security policy in Northern Ireland reveals the Bloody Sunday experience as a integral part of a sustained pattern in which law and justice have served as powerful and malleable tools in the hands of the political and security establishments, rather than as constraints on the excesses of the security forces. Prospects for a revival of justice and the rule of law are found in the 1998 Good Friday Agreement and the unprecedented decision to establish a second tribunal of inquiry into Bloody Sunday.
Those Are Real Bullets, Aren't They?: Bloody Sunday, Derry, 30 January 1972 by Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson (Paperback; 12.99 IEP / 20.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
Despite hundreds of contemporary eyewitness accounts an official government inquiry exonerated the army, blaming instead the organisers of the march and the IRA, whom it said had started the shooting. For nearly thirty years the hidden truths of Bloody Sunday were locked in government files. Vital evidence was gathered by Peter Pringle and Philip Jacobson, journalists who were members of the Insight team. Using their unique research plus recently declassified documents and new statements from soldiers, civilians and the IRA, they have pieced together a narrative history of that terrible day in Derry. The book provides an intimate portrait of a city in revolt and the climax of a failed military response that plunged Northern Ireland into three decades of armed conflict. This extraordinary account recovers the faces of the soldiers and the gunmen, the stone-throwing youths and civil rights marchers who came together in the fatal fusion when Britain went to war with its own citizens.
Mountjoy: The Story of a Prison by Tim Carey (Paperback; 12.99 IEP / 20.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
On 26 March, 1850, the Dublin Evening Post reported that the previous afternoon the Lord Lieutenant was received at the new prison. He 'expressed himself highly gratified with every department'. Mountjoy was ready for prisoners. This book opens the window on Mountjoy's remarkable and often bizarre history. It is an epic story with a cast of over half a million, including staff, petty thieves, vicious murders and famous figures in Irish history. This is a unique insight into Ireland's most famous and difficult institution.
Is Shane MacGowan Still Alive?: Travels in Irishry by Tim Bradford (Paperback; 12.50 IEP / 19.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
Tim Bradford thinks he is the Jack Kerouac of Ireland. He's got a one-tune cuddly singing leprechaun named Neal Cassady, and together they travel the highways and byways of Ireland. On their brief and delightful expeditions around the country, they visit the mystical garages of Youghal; 'repair' to the Curragh of Kildare (just like Christy Moore); go on a cultural tour with a female Gaelic footballer; meet the spottiest hitch-hiker in Europe; and drive the worst roads in Europe. Their journeys - plus other highly original Irish odysseys such as Camden Town tube to Chalk Farm tube, across the top of Yeats' mountain with an egg sandwich or up the last 500 yards of the Fulham Palace Road - give the author the chance to ponder the great unanswered questions and unsung heroes of Ireland and Irishness and put forward a new pantheon of Celtic myths and legends.
Rent: The Secret World of Male Prostitution in Dublin by Evanna Kearins (Paperback; 7.99 IEP / 11.00 USD) [Add To Basket]
The recent banning of a Dublin-based magazine for carrying advertisements for sexual services in its classified section has highlighted the sex industry in Dublin. Yet little is know about one category of sex worker: the male prostitute. The author estimates that there are some hundreds of these 'invisible men' in Dublin and the aim of her book is to throw some light on them. Over a period of months she has entered the world of many young male prostitutes, some of whom work on the streets or hustle in Phoenix Park and on Burgh Quay, others who operate as masseurs or escorts from relatively more secure surroundings. They spoke frankly to her about the sexual activities they engage in, their backgrounds, their education and their clients. This book lifts the lid on an aspect of Irish lift too often disregarded or swept under the carpet. It presents the engaging and often moving stories of the young men who offer sex for sale.
The Politics of Irish Drama: Plays in Context from Boucicault to Friel by Nicholas Grene (Paperback; 18.50 IEP / 24.50 USD) [Add To Basket]
In this book the author explores political contexts for some of the outstanding Irish plays from the nineteenth century to the contemporary period, including The Playboy of the Western World and The Plough and the Stars, with the famous riots they provoked. The politics of Irish drama have previously been considered primarily the politics of national self-expression. Here it is argued that Irish plays, in their self-conscious representation of the otherness of Ireland, are outwardly directed towards audiences both at home and abroad. The political dynamics of such relations between plays and audiences is the book's multiple subject: the stage interpretation of Ireland from The Shaughraun to Translations; the contentious stage images of Yeats, Gregory and Synge; reactions to revolution from O'Casey to Behan; the post-colonial worlds of Purgatory and All That Fall; the imagined Irelands of Friel and Murphy, McGuinness and Barry. In reinterpreting its politics, the author offers a new conception of Irish drama.
In Code: A Mathematical Journey by Sarah Flannery (Hardback; 14.99 IEP / 22.50) [Add To Basket]
Sarah Flannery is a cryptographer and a mathematician in the making with an international reputation, yet still only a teenager. At the age of 16 she won the 1999 Irish Young Scientist of the Year award with her 'Cayley-Purser algorithm', an innovative system of encoding data on the Internet. She is also a 1999 European Young Scientist of the Year. She has travelled the world and lectured widely, and has had approaches from many computer companies and universities. In this remarkable book, she tells the story of her life, mathematics and making codes. It is a popular science book with a personal angle, and also a fresh and modest self-portrait by a girl who is the reverse of a comic strip swot.
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