The Northern Ireland Question. The peace process and the Belfast Agreement Brian Barton and Patrick J. Roche (eds) (Palgrave MacMillan, £55) ISBN 9780230203808 On 23 May 1998 at the King’s Hall, Belfast, as the counting of votes in the referendum on the Belfast Agreement was coming to a conclusion, a small group of campaign workers … Read more
The conflict in Northern Ireland continues to provide a steady supply of new titles, academic and popular, to our bookshelves. The grim, but essential, starting-point for those who want an overview of the human cost of the conflict should be Lost lives: the stories of the men, women and children who died through the Northern … Read more
Watch the beetles scuttle Brathadóirí Thursdays, 10pm, 21 May–25 June 2009, TG4 by Anthony McIntyre Irish revolutionary history has been replete with the informer type. The degree to which they shaped it may have been exaggerated by their handlers, victims and journalists alike, but it is indisputable that their role has earned them no small … Read more
Five minutes of heaven 5 April 2009, BBC2 Directed by Oliver Hirschbiegel by John Gibney On 29 October 1975 James Griffin, a twenty-year-old Catholic stonecutter from Lurgan, was shot dead by the UVF. The Griffin family home was on the edge of a loyalist area, and at approximately 7.30pm a car containing four masked men … Read more
McKEAGUE, John Dunlop (1930–82), loyalist activist, was born at Messines Cottage, Bushmills, Co. Antrim, one of six children of Thomas McKeague and his wife, Isabella. The family operated a guesthouse in Portrush before moving to Belfast, where they opened a stationer’s shop on the Albertbridge Road; it was inherited by McKeague and in the late … Read more