Henry McDonald

"Two souls, alas, are housed within my breast, and each will wrestle for the mastery there." --Faust / Goethe Set against the soundtrack of David Bowie's first Berlin album "Low," Two Souls is an explosive novel that moves deftly between three time-frames: Belfast, August 1978 and the doomed love affair between a young punk and an older, bohemian art student; April 1979, specifically a frenzied Irish Cup Final day, the young punk now transformed into a violent football hooligan; and, through a series of smuggled "prison comms," the dark, paramilitary-stalked Belfast streets of 1987, that young punk now an INLA leader embarking on the assassination of former comrades in a bitter feud, where all threads collide in a tense, thrilling denouement. A seething cast of football hooligans, anarchic punks, paramilitary killers, disillusioned socialists and a young couple in a love affair that leaves a bitter, lethal legacy--all played out against a fizzing backdrop of sex, drugs, punk and avant-garde, punishment shootings, clerical child sex abuse, the advent of video porn and the end of communism. At turns shocking and heart-breaking, with razor-sharp language and a turbo-charged plot, Two Souls is a singular "Troubles" novel like no other, tragically exposing human nature's futile efforts to make the right decisions and to choose a life worth living. Think Martin Amis meets Irving Welsh against a febrile and gritty sectarian backdrop.

Two Souls

Jim Cusack

Now that Northern Ireland’s “troubles” appear to be over, with old enemies the DUP and Sinn Féin sharing power, what will happen to the hard men of loyalism? The Ulster Volunteer Force emerged during the first sparks of Northern Ireland’s Troubles in the mid-1960s. Their campaign of violence quickly marked them out as one of the most extreme loyalist groups. Henry MacDonald and Jim Cusack provide a fascinating insight into the UVF’s origins, growth and decline. They follow the careers of some of the key players in the UVF, including Gusty Spence, Billy Wright and David Ervine. They catalogue the atrocities in which the UVF were involved, including the Dublin and Monaghan bombings; the emergence of the notorious renegade Shankill Butchers; and the various bloody feuds that have infected loyalism. They trace the paramilitary organisation from the violent margins, through the horrors of the 1970s and 1980s, to its shaky 1994 ceasefire and its crucial (if sometimes reluctant) role in the peace process that led up to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.

UVF - The Endgame

Jack Holland

The Irish National Liberation Army was one of the most ruthless terrorist organisations during the troubles in Northern Ireland. Formed in 1974 as a splinter group of the Official IRA, the INLA's campaign of murder throughout the 1970s and 1980s included such notorious acts as the bombing of the Droppin' Well in Derry in 1982 and, perhaps most infamously, the kidnapping and mutilation of Dublin dentist by former member, the 'Border Fox'. Many of their leading members found death at the end of a gun, including founder members Seamus Costello and Ronnie Bunting, and leader Dominic McGlinchey. The INLA were also involved in numerous bloody feuds and splits. This new revised edition of a classic book brings the INLA story right up to date, featuring the 1997 killing of LVF leader Billy 'King Rat' Wright; their 1998 ceasefire; their continuing involvement in punishment attacks and criminal activities; and their declaration, in October 2009, that their armed campaign was finally over.

I.N.L.A - Deadly Divisions

The Irish National Liberation Army was one of the most ruthless terrorist organisations during the troubles in Northern Ireland. This new edition of a classic book brings the INLA story right up to date, featuring the 1997 killing of LVF leader Billy 'King Rat' Wright and their declaration, in October 2009, that their armed campaign was finally over.

Deadly Divisions

INLA

"31 August 1994. The IRA ceasefire is announced in Belfast. Gerry Adams takes to the podium built close to Sinn Fein headquarters. All around him are placed helium balloons, flowers, teddy bears, good luck cards, etc. It's more like a kid's birthday party than the end of a war." "What Adams had to say was even more instructive. He talked about the community once being on its knees - an appeal to those scarred in memory by the loyalist pogroms of 1969. His speech was full of references to nationalist equality and parity of esteem. In short, he was re-packaging the so-called armed struggle as somehow the outworking of the old civil rights struggle." "Gunsmoke and Mirrors challenges this epic piece of myth-making." "Henry McDonald, himself from the republican Markets area of Belfast, talks to ex-IRA men about their real motivations for starting their war. It had nothing to do with civil rights. The settlement which Sinn Fein/IRA finally secured in 2007 is almost identical with one that had been on the table thirty years earlier. McDonald exposes the memorialist culture which continues to rewrite history to justify the unjustifiable." "McDonald gets past the cheap hagiography of terrorists and the wasted lives of a generation to focus on one essential truth: none of the IRA's principal war aims was achieved. The whole sorry business was a waste of time. The people who died, died in vain." --Book Jacket.

Henry McDonald

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