Nick Maxwell Crimes of loyalty: a history of the UDA Ian S. Wood (Edinburgh University Press, £15.99) ISBN 9780748624270 Lord, oh lord, what a depressing book! Militant loyalism is one of the truly awful traditions that has blighted this island, and Ian Wood’s history of the Ulster Defence Association illustrates that point in almost all of its … Read more
Sir,—I followed with interest the debate on Peter Hart’s interpretation of the 1922 Dunmanway massacre (John M. Regan, HI 20.1, Jan./Feb. 2012, Platform; Jeffrey Dudgeon, HI 20.2, March/April 2012, Letters). Hart’s reputation is unlikely to be damaged by Regan’s analysis, however. To somebody who knows the area, Regan’s handling of data is so slipshod and … Read more
Luck and the Irish: a brief history of change, 1970–2000 R. F. Foster (Allen Lane, £20) ISBN 9780195179521 Bemused is the word that comes to mind. Roy Foster seems bemused by what has happened here in the past three decades, particularly the past ten years. He is not alone in his mystification. In fact, many … Read more
Sir,—Jeffrey Dudgeon’s reply to John M. Regan (HI 20.2, Jan./Feb. 2012, Letters) raises the possibility that Frank Busteed was an IRA officer partly responsible for killing ten loyalist Protestants from 26 to 29 April 1922. While evidence is tenuous, Peter Hart’s withholding of this and other (more crucial) evidence indicating a non-sectarian explanation in The … Read more
The Writings of Theobald Wolfe Tone, 1763–1798, Volume III: France, the Rhine, Lough Swilly and death of Tone, January 1797 to November 1798 T. W. Moody, R. B. McDowell and C. J. Woods (eds) (Clarendon Press, £125) ISBN 9780198208808The recent publication of the final volume of his Writings seems an appropriate moment to consider the … Read more