The insider: the Belfast prison diaries of Eamonn Boyce, 1956–1962 Anna Bryson (ed.) (Lilliput Press, €40) ISBN 9781843511298 The history of the IRA ‘border campaign’ of 1956–62 is in its infancy. Very few titles have focused on the republican offensive that made Seán South and Fergal O’Hanlon household names of their generation. This writer’s From … Read more
On the night of 21 January 1981 the IRA broke into Tynan Abbey, south Armagh, and killed Sir Norman Stronge, eighth baronet, and his only son, James, before setting the 231-year-old mansion alight. Stronge, 86 at his death, had once been the Stormont MP for mid-Armagh (1938–69), fulfilling the duties of Speaker of the House … Read more
Sir, —The errors in Tony Canavan’s piece on the vandalised painting at Stormont (‘A papist painting for a Protestant parliament?’, HI 16.1, Jan./Feb. 2008) lead me to wonder whether he really researched the topic or rather acquired his information at second or third hand. The man who attacked the painting was Charles Forrester, not ‘Forster’. … Read more
In March 1972 the British government abolished the unionist-dominated parliament at Stormont but subsequently found it extremely difficult to establish a new administration. The overall parameters of a political settlement (at least as far as the British government was concerned) were clear: a power-sharing administration for Northern Ireland with both unionist and nationalist political opinion … Read more
‘Never make predictions . . . especially about the future’ By the time you read this, elections to the Northern Ireland assembly will have taken place and a power-sharing executive may (or may not) have been formed. My hunch is that it will, but in saying so I am conscious of the ghost of the … Read more