Rebel hearts: Journeys within the IRA's soul - Hardcover

Kevin Toolis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0330342436 ISBN 13: 9780330342438

Publisher: Picador, 1995

Synopsis

This is a detailed and revealing portrait of the world of the IRA. For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the men and women who fought the IRA's war against the British state. Each chapter of the book explores a world where history, faith and human savagery dominates lives and deaths. In "Brothers" a whole family is sucked into Ulster's troubles, killing their enemies and then being killed themselves. "Informers" shows the underside of the intelligence war between the British security forces and the IRA, and the bullet-in-the-head consequences for those IRA volunteers who "turn" and betray their one-time comrades. "Martyrs" shows the transformation of an IRA volunteer, whose attempt to ambush and murder goes wrong, and turns him into a martyr for the cause. This book is a history, a map and a guide to the psychological underworld of the world's most enduring terrorist cause. It explains and uncovers the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland through a series of connected individual portraits of IRA men, from the leaders to the lowest level of volunteer, killed on his first operation.

About this title

About the Author

Kevin Toolis, a journalist and screenwriter, was born in Edinburgh of Irish parents. Rebel Hearts is his first book.

From Kirkus Reviews

Small societies with big troubles often spawn remarkable books, and this one on the IRA by Toolis, a British journalist of Irish descent, is one of the best. The unequal dimensions of the adversaries are extraordinary enough. The IRA consists of about 600 volunteers and has a budget of less that $8 million a year. By comparison, the British government has 30,000 combat troops in Northern Ireland and spends œ1 billion a year in attempting to suppress its opponents. Since 1973 the war has been taken to England itself in an attempt ``to sap the will of the British Government.'' The IRA came close to assassinating Margaret Thatcher and a number of her colleagues in Brighton, and more recently John Major and his War Cabinet while they were meeting at Downing Street. The strength of Toolis's book is that he communicates the personal dimension of this dedication and cruelty: a once apolitical family whose sons became leaders in the IRA or lawyers defending it; Paddy Flood, who was executed by the IRA as a traitor; Frankie Ryan, who blew himself and his girlfriend up while trying to set off a bomb; Joe MacManus, who died trying to murder a Protestant dog-catcher; and Martin McGuinness, who is probably the head of the IRA. Toolis believes the ``the long horror of Ulster's troubles is dwindling away to a whimpering conclusion,'' an opinion surprising in light of the evidence of polarization that he deploys. Despite the ``final bitter contradiction'' that ``the justice of the political cause was invalidated by the cruelty of the murders carried out in its name,'' he believes that ``there will be peace in Ireland and it will be a republican peace.'' One can argue with his conclusions, but it would be hard to find another book that looks as dispassionately into the soul of the IRA and its influence on the future of Northern Ireland. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Edition details

• Publisher: Picador
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0330342436
• ISBN 13: 9780330342438
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 400