"The Irish War"

I have just finished reading a book, "The Irish War" by Tony Geraghty.

Rather than a chronological history of "the troubles" it looks at the period from the late 1960s to the late 90s under a series of headings: the civil rights movement (and its use by the IRA to disguise its intentions), the military response, the shift to police primacy and the use of intelligence.

It also looks at the history of the IRA, the various factions and their internal battles over strategy. The book does also look at the history of Ireland from the time of Wolf Tome to the end of the civil war post independence.

I have previously read a number of books about the war in NI (for that is what it surely was no matter what the politicians thought) having developed an interest in the subject. I have never been there and the closest I ever came to that war was being in ear shot of two PIRA bombs in London in 1974.

This is the first book that has explicitley stated something that I have thought for a long time. That is, the Irish are the only reace that not only remembers its history but is determined to repeat it. I recommend the book to ARRSE readers.

 

I read it a couple of years ago and found some of the descriptions of the 'intelligence war' interesting, only having seen glimpses and heard rumours of what was really going on when I was there (yes, I WAS cleared to rumour).

On the downside, I find Geraghty (or 'McGeraghty' as he describes his roots in an apparent attempt to build some kind of shaky street cred with his audience) overly self-promoting and almost sickly sentimental about the Irish situation. He drifts off course down self-indulgence land far too many times to keep the book professionally interesting, IMHO.

I lost interest before finishing it, I'm afraid, but the Fusilier on the front cover looks well psycho, so I like to keep it around to put my tea mug on.

I would therefore recommend that ARRSEers read at least the first half, and keep the second for bog roll and dinner table coasters.