Books on the troubles/the North

highlydebased

Anyone got any suggestions for books on the troubles/general history on the north/good friday etc etc. Basically looking for a starting point if anything, don't want anything too academic either!

r3nu4l

Try 'shoot to kill' by Michael Asher. It's the story of a guy who joined the Paras and served in NI in the late 70sbefore joining the territorial army SAS and then going full time into the RUC special patrol group.

Also try '50 dead men walking', the story of an informer within the IRA.

There's loads of books from the Republican point of view too and some general history books. However, i thought it would be good to give some ideas of books from another perspective too.

Sunnyisland

As well as the above I would recommend these books

Peter Taylor has written three related books on the Troubles called, Provos: The IRA and Sinn Féin,Loyalists, and Brits: The War against the IRA, and a fourth book, titled, Beating the Terrorists? Interrogation in Omagh, Gough, and Castlereagh (Penguin, 1980).

The three aforementioned books each deal with the Northern Irish conflict from the perspective of one of the three main elements involved: the Provisional IRA; the various Loyalist paramilitaries and their political wings; and the British government together with the British security forces' presence.

These books give some insight and understanding of all the main groups involved and the events that occurred throughout this turbulent period in Irish-British history.

Taylor's books feature interviews with people connected to some of the more significant incidents and important occurrences in Northern Ireland during this time.

baalthor

Here are some that I read and that have stayed in my memory:

Bernadette Devlin - "The Price of My Soul"

Peter Beresford - "Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike"

Martin Dillon - "The Shankill Butchers: A Case Study in Mass Murder"

Martin Dillon - "The Dirty War"

Tony Geraghty - "Soldier of the Queen"

eire4

I think Tim Pat Coogan's The Troubles Ireland's Ordeal 1966-1996 would be an excellent read for you.

LiamMc

Proxopera - Benedict Kiely

Harrowing. Written in 1977 about a farmer whose family are threatened unless he completes a task on behalf of some racists.
Written in 1977, but since then I have read articles that the IRA 'had a proxy bomb campaign for a short time in the early 1990's'. That is scary.

Paddy Samurai

Only read a few books about this ,but two off the top of my head ……………

Ten Dead Men by David Beresford

In 1981 ten men starved themselves to death inside the walls of Long Kesh prison in Belfast. While a stunned world watched and distraught family members kept bedside vigils, one "soldier" after another slowly went to his death in an attempt to make Margaret Thatcher's government recognize them as political prisoners rather than common criminals.

Drawing extensively on secret IRA documents and letters from the prisoners smuggled out at the time, David Beresford tells the gripping story of these strikers and their devotion to the cause. An intensely human story, Ten Men Dead offers a searing portrait of strife-torn Ireland, of the IRA, and the passions -- on both sides -- that Republicanism arouses.

Contact by A.F.N. Clarke

AFN Clarke's best selling and controversial book CONTACT is a raw, visceral, "no-holds-barred" account of what it's like to be in combat. When it was first published it caused a furore for its devastating honesty and chilling revelations of one of the men we pay to kill. Clarke vividly recounts his experiences of two tours in Northern Ireland (in Belfast and Crossmaglen) as a Platoon Commander with Britain's elite Parachute Regiment during the blood soaked 1970's. The dangers, political agendas and religious roots underlying the conflict are eerily and heartbreakingly similar to Iraq, and Afghanistan today.

If it helps heres a link here to the Guardian Newspaper's 10 Books on the troubles.



http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/feb/22/bestbooks.politics

charlemont

Democracy denied, Desmond Wilson. Excellent read.

allprops

4. Bandit Country: The IRA and South Armagh by Toby Harnden
Courageous journalism and compulsive reading as Harnden goes inside the most impenetrable and deadly of the IRA Brigades. Good judgment; great sources. Very fair to both sides. Very readable.
Stuart Neville's fiction is very good on the post troubles period.

Tom Joad

Definitive history of the troubles would bt Tim Pat Coogan's the troubles. From the other side so to speak Jonathan Bardon's A History of Ulster, while a weighty tome, is well worth the read.