Download or read book Bloody Belfast written by Ken Wharton and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former soldier Ken Wharton witnessed the troubles in Northern Ireland first hand. Bloody Belfast is a fascinating oral history given a chilling insight into the killing grounds of Belfast's streets. Wharton's work is based on first hand accounts from the soldiers. The reader can walk the darkened, dangerous streets of the Lower Falls, the Divis Flats and New Lodge alongside the soldiers who braved the hate-filled mobs on the newer, but no less violent streets of the 'Murph, Turf Lodge and Andersonstown. The author has interviewed UDR soldier Glen Espie who survived being ambushed and shot by the IRA not once, but twice, and Army Dog Handler Dougie Durrant, who, through the incredible ability of his dog, tracked an IRA gunman fresh from the murder of a soldier to where he was sitting in a hot bath in the Turf Lodge, desperately trying to wash away the forensic evidence. Wharton's reputation for honesty established from previous works has encouraged more former soldiers of Britain's forgotten army to come forward to tell their stories of Bloody Belfast. The book continues the story of his previous work, presenting the truth about a conflict which has sometimes been deliberately underplayed by the Establishment.
Download or read book What a Bloody Awful Country written by Kevin Meagher and published by Biteback Publishing. This book was released on 2022-08-30 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Highly readable" – Irish News "A gripping appraisal of Northern Ireland's turbulent first century. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we have got to where we are today." – Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph "A timely and lucid analysis of the Troubles that asks hard questions of successive British governments. The good news for the current government is that it also offers some answers." – Rory Carroll, The Guardian *** "For God's sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!" Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, returning from his first visit to Northern Ireland in 1970 As a long and bloody guerrilla war staggered to a close on the island of Ireland, Britain beat a retreat from all but a small portion of the country – and thus, in 1921, Northern Ireland was born. That partition, says Kevin Meagher, has been an unmitigated disaster for Nationalists and Unionists alike. Following the fraught history of British rule in Ireland, a better future was there for the taking but was lost amid political paralysis, while the resulting fifty years of devolution succeeded only in creating a brooding sectarian stalemate that exploded into the Troubles. In a stark but reasoned critique, Meagher traces the landmark events in Northern Ireland's century of existence, exploring the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland has been governed over the past 100 years. Thoughtful and sometimes provocative, What a Bloody Awful Country reflects on how both Loyalists and Republicans might have played their cards differently and, ultimately, how the actions of successive British governments have amounted to a masterclass in failed statecraft.
Download or read book Another Bloody Chapter in an Endless Civil War written by Ken Wharton and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2016-10-19 with total page 421 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Four years of bloodshed in mid-1980s Northern Ireland, in the words of British soldiers who experienced it firsthand. Includes photos. Proceeding month-by-month from 1984 through 1987, this historical project provides a deep and detailed portrait of the British military experience in a period of frequent and unpredictable violence as the Provisional IRA grew in financial and logistical strength. As British Security Forces worked to contain the chaos, the Republican terror group fully embraced Danny Morrison’s mantra— “The Armalite and the ballot box”—as they moved toward a realization that the British military could not be beaten, but that they could at least sit down with them from a position of strength. The goal was to keep up the pressure and force the British government to the bargaining table. But as the Provisionals and Loyalists fought, talked, and then fought again, a further 356 people died. Through oral histories, witness accounts, photos, and commentary, this book covers every major incident of the period, from the ambush of off-duty UDR soldier Robert Elliott to the bombing of Enniskillen. It also looks at the continued interference of the United States and the vast contribution of its citizens through NORAID, which ensured the killing and violence would continue. Lamenting brutality and the targeting of innocents regardless of the perpetrator’s sympathies, veteran Ken Wharton, who has chronicled the Troubles extensively, reminds us of the universal threat, and horrifying toll, of terrorist tactics.
Download or read book The Ghosts of Belfast written by Stuart Neville and published by Soho Press. This book was released on 2016-01-12 with total page 401 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Northern Ireland's troubles may be over, but peace has not erased the crimes of the past. Gerry Fegan, a former paramilitary contract killer, is haunted by the ghosts of the twelve people he slaughtered. ... In order to appease the ghosts, Fegan is going to have to kill the men who gave him orders"--Page 4 of cover
Download or read book Belfast Diary written by John Conroy and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Resolution of intractable problems around the world requires understanding ordinary people as well as leaders. This street-level view of Northern Ireland provides the best explanation of the twenty-five-year conflict.
Download or read book The Bloody Red Hand written by Derek Lundy and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2011-04-20 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A bestselling chronicler of the sea turns to a trio of his own ancestors to see what memory and the selective plundering of history has made of the truth in Northern Ireland. The name “Lundy” is synonymous with traitor in Ulster. Derek Lundy’s first ancestral subject was the Protestant governor of Derry in 1688, just before it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. For reasons that remain ambiguous, Robert ordered the gates of the city opened in surrender. Protestant hard-liners staged a coup de ville and drove him away in disgrace, a traitor to the cause. But Robert is more memorable for his peace-seeking moderation than for the treachery the standard history attributes to him. William Steel Dickson’s legacy is a little different: a Presbyterian minister born in the late 18th century, he preached with famous eloquence in favour of using whatever means necessary to resist the tyranny of the English, including joining forces with the Catholics in armed rebellion. Finally, there is “Billy” Lundy, born in 1890, the antithesis of the ecumenical William, and the embodiment of what the Ulster Protestants had become by the beginning of World War I – a tribe united in their hostility to Catholics and to the project of an independent Ireland. The lives of Robert Lundy, William Steel Dickson and Billy Lundy encapsulate many themes in the Ulster past. In telling their stories, Derek Lundy lays bare the harsh and murderous mythologies of Northern Ireland and gives us a revision of its history that seems particularly relevant in today’s world. Excerpt from The Bloody Red Hand: The other thing I remember is the look the young man gave me, after he had taken the cash, put his pistol away and was standing with his hands in his jacket pockets. It wasn’t the expression of someone who was thinking of shooting me too; I never had that feeling. But the way he looked at me was so familiar – wary and calculating. Many people in Belfast had stared in the same way since I’d arrived for a visit. For a long time, I couldn’t understand what it meant. Eventually, I knew. They were trying to decide “what foot I kicked with” – what religion I was. There were supposed ways to tell, subtle indicators. Was I someone they should fear? Or was I one of them? That was what the armed robber was doing, too. He had just shot a man who knew him by his first name. But he was looking at me, the stranger, and trying to figure out whether I was a Prod or a Taig.
Download or read book The Bloodiest Year written by Ken Wharton and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2011-10-21 with total page 480 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 1972 was the bloodiest year of an already bloody conflict played out on the streets of Northern Ireland. Over twelve months the country was rocked by the atrocities of Bloody Friday and the Claudy bombing, civilian casualties mounted, and the soldiers of the British Army were caught between the factions. 169 servicemen died that year, their deaths unnoticed at home except by their loved ones, fighting a forgotten war on British soil. In The Bloodiest Year, Ken Wharton, a former soldier who did two tours of Northern Ireland, tells the story of the worst year of the Troubles through the accounts of the men who patrolled the streets of Belfast and Londonderry, who saw their comrades die and walked with death themselves. He examines almost every single death during that year, and names the men behind the violence, many of whom now hold high office in the country they tried so hard to break apart.
Download or read book The Valkyrie Project written by Michael Kilian and published by Open Road Media. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A doomed journalist travels to Iceland to destroy a Soviet superweapon Halfway between the United States and the Soviet Union, Iceland is one of the most strategic points in the Cold War. And home to a NATO squadron that could wipe Moscow off the map in an instant, it’s is about to become the unwitting host for the most daring operation in military history. On the remote coast of this frost-bound island, the Soviets are building a laser powerful enough to bring the United States to its knees. They call it Valkyrie, and once it’s operational, the free world will no longer be free. When an exiled East German scientist notices a suspicious drain on the Icelandic electrical grid, the KGB sends an assassin to protect their superweapon. Halting the madness falls to Jack Spencer, an American journalist with a terminal disease—which may kill him before he gets a chance to save the world.
Download or read book Bloody Sunday written by Ian Hernon and published by Amberley Publishing Limited. This book was released on 2021-12-15 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fifty years on, a compelling new perspective on one of the most violent and controversial events of The Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Download or read book To a Dark Place written by Ken Wharton and published by The History Press. This book was released on 2022-01-13 with total page 430 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between 1969 and 1998, over 4,000 people lost their lives in the small country of Northern Ireland. The vast majority of these deaths were sectarian in nature and involved ordinary civilians, killed by the various paramilitary groups. These organisations murdered freely and without remorse, considering life a cheap price to pay in the furtherance of their cause. The words 'Why us?' were uttered by many families whose lives were ripped asunder by The Troubles. Thousands of innocents received a life sentence at the hands of the terrorists; these, then, are their words, the words of those who survived such attacks, and of those left behind. These poignant and tragic stories come from the people who have been forced to live with the emotional shrapnel of terrorism.
Download or read book Out of the Ashes written by Robert White and published by Merrion Press. This book was released on 2017-04-25 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Out of the Ashes is the definitive history of the Provisional Irish Republican movement, from its formation at the outset of the modern Troubles up to and after its official disarmament in 2005. Robert White, a prolific observer of IRA and Sinn Féin activities, has amassed an incomparable body of interview material from leading members over a thirty-year period. In this defining study, the interviewees provide extraordinary insights into the complex motivations that provoked their support for armed struggle, their eventual reform, and the mind-set of today’s ‘dissidents’ who refuse to lay down their arms. Those interviewed stem from every stage of the Provisionals’ history, from founding figures such as Seán Mac Stiofáin, Ruairí Ó Brádaigh and Joe Cahill to the new generation that replaced them: Martin McGuinness, Danny Morrison, and Brendan Hughes among others. Out of the Ashes is a pioneering history that breaks new ground in defining how the Provisionals operated, caused worldwide condemnation, and were transformed by constitutional politics.
Download or read book Say Nothing written by Patrick Radden Keefe and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2019-02-26 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.
Download or read book Catholic World written by and published by . This book was released on 1926 with total page 886 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Men That God Made Mad written by Derek Lundy and published by Random House. This book was released on 2010-10-31 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this remarkable book, Belfast-born Derek Lundy uses the lives of three of his ancestors as a prism through which to examine what memory and the selective plundering of history has made of the truth in Northern Ireland. In Ulster the name 'Lundy' is synonymous with 'traitor'. Robert Lundy was the Protestant governor of Londonderry in 1688, just before it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. Robert Lundy ordered the city's capitulation. Crying 'No Surrender', hardline Protestants prevented it and drove him away in disgrace. William Steel Dickson's legacy is a little different. A Presbyterian minister born in the mid-eighteenth century, he preached with famous eloquence in favour of using whatever means necessary to resist the tyranny of the English. Finally there is 'Billy' Lundy, born in 1890, the embodiment of what the Ulster Protestants had become by the beginning of World War I - a tribe united in their hostility to Catholics and to the concept of a united Ireland. The lives of Robert Lundy, William Steel Dickson and Billy Lundy encapsulate many themes in the Ulster past. In telling their stories, Derek Lundy lays bare the harsh and murderous mythologies of Northern Ireland and gives us a revision of its history that seems particularly relevant in today's world.
Download or read book Bloody Sunday written by Don Mullan and published by Roberts Rinehart Publishers. This book was released on 1997 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents eyewitness accounts of the massacre which took place January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland during an anti-internment march in which the British Army opened fire and consequently killed fourteen people and wounded thirteen.
Download or read book Wasted Years Wasted Lives Volume 2 written by Ken Wharton and published by Helion and Company. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume 2 does what it says on the can - it continues from where the first volume left off. It looks at the bloody years of 1978 and 1979. It covers eyewitness accounts from soldiers on the ground and there is the occasional comment from civilians who were living in the troubled province at the time. There are accounts from the IRA atrocity at the la Mon Restaurant when the terrorists used a napalm-like device to incinerate 12 innocent civilians; it includes the murder of Lord Mountbatten, hero of Burma, and some of his family and staff on his yacht in Co Sligo. It also covers the worst tragedy for the Army in Ulster, the murder of 18 soldiers at Warrenpoint. Every single troubles-related death and every major incident is covered and includes those soldiers who died in 'non-battle' incidents, the ones who are not included in the 'official' figures. The book pulls no punches and the author is outspoken in his criticism of the Irish-American community and their incredibly naïve support of the Republican terrorists who almost destroyed an entire country. The author condemns in equal measure the paramilitaries of both sides and considers the evil activities of Lenny Murphy and the 'Shankill Butchers' as bad as anything which the Provisional IRA or INLA did. The book looks at individual incidents and tries to examine the terrorist mindset and their motives for the atrocities which they carried out in the name of their communities. It supports the security forces unequivocally but renders criticism where appropriate. The book examines the role of the young soldiers from Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, indeed from every part of the UK from which these young men came. It looks at foot patrols, riot control and the daily fear and threat under which they operated for their four month or two year tours. Read carefully the words of an Irish-American who clearly is contemptuous of the way her fellow Americans almost sleepwalked into supporting the IRA from afar with the dollars which they placed so willingly into the NORAID collection jars. The level of detail and research the author goes into is phenomenal and demonstrates his commitment to continue telling the story of one of Britain's forgotten wars.
Download or read book Bossa Nova written by Steven Henry and published by Clickworks Press. This book was released on 2021-06-27 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Justice is a matter of perspective. A pleasant Sunday dinner at an Italian restaurant takes a nasty turn for Detective Erin O’Reilly when the waiter slits the throat of a long-time patron. It’s an open-and-shut case, but this murder is only the beginning. All across New York, captains in the Lucarelli Mafia family are being picked off in a series of carefully-orchestrated hits. Erin and her K-9 Rolf, still recovering from the trauma of their last case, jump back into the action. They’ll need to stay sharp, especially since this isn't the first time they've tangled with the new boss of the Lucarellis, slick mafioso Vinnie Moreno. “The Oil Man” has a knack for slithering out of trouble, and he’s not alone. The Mafia has deep roots in New York City, some of which have insinuated themselves into the ranks of law enforcement. Street justice is the rule of the day. Amid conflicting codes of honor, Erin finds herself questioning what justice really means, and whether it’s possible to take down the bad guys while staying on the side of the angels. And in the end, as she runs out of options, Erin may be in the most danger from herself.
