Books – Page 8 – Slugger O'Toole

Truth or justice: Highly unlikely that most us will ever have either…

Mick Fealty on March 28, 2014, 10:40 am

| Readers 67

Riffing of Kevin Cullen of the Boston Globe, Seamus comes up with an argument you sense has been much talked about under wraps but which no one has the political strength (rather than confidence) to ask for: The only legitimate way to end yet more years of speculation and anguish for the McConville family is for the governments of Ireland and Britain to agree a general amnesty that will allow all participants to the conflict, willing or otherwise, to give …

The Last Story of Reverend Robert Bradford

Barton Creeth on March 9, 2014, 4:34 pm

| Readers 3966

In a journalism climate adverse to costly, time-intensive investigations, Belfast writer Lyra McKee is hoping to defy the odds by using the power of the internet to crowdfund her book about the last weeks of murdered South Belfast MP, Rev Robert Bradford. D emocracy depends on good investigative reporting. When society loses its muckrakers, the powerful and the crooked get away with their wicked deeds. But the digital age has not been kind to the traditional institutions of journalism. …

The Belfast Urban Motorway (Wesley Johnston): economic, engineering, political and social drivers that created Belfast’s road network

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on March 3, 2014, 9:00 am

| Readers 651

Imagine an elevated three-lane motorway encircling Belfast city centre. A mini-M25 taking through-traffic off the inner-city streets, serving all parts of the city equally? Imagine the noise and pollution from an above ground ring-road, jammed full beyond its intended capacity, severing communities with its concrete and tarmac. A monument to the victory of private over public transport? “Fundamentally, it is a story about the contradictory needs of the people of Belfast and what they were and were not prepared to …

“For the celebrity, the interview is thus generally reduced to an exercise in saying as little as possible without confounding the self-love of the journalist on the sofa”

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on January 19, 2014, 10:42 pm

| Readers 88

Alain de Botton spent seven days living in a Heathrow hotel and working from a desk in the newly opened Terminal 5 in order to write a short book A Week at the Airport . He cast his voyeuristic glances in all directions, commentating on the sense of passion and the moment of separation of lovers, sitting on the closed runway in the middle of the night, as well as discovering that the terminal’s largest bookshop didn’t stock any of …

A is for Activist

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on December 28, 2013, 7:27 pm

| Readers 356

From an early age, children are introduced to animals, right and wrong, concepts of fulfilment and disappointment, fear and joy, all through chewed hardback books. Princesses are in need of rescue, dogs misbehave and talk, mice covet strawberries. Wealth is equated with happiness, poverty with sorrow. How do you introduce the concepts of social justice, gender equality, caring for the environment, and the responsibility for citizens to fight for each other’s rights? Innosanto Nagara wrote A is for Activist. Originally …

“I want a society where we will have politics & not a sectarian pantomime” (Alf McCreary in 1976)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on December 23, 2013, 8:30 am

| Readers 195

In his autobiography Behind the Headlines, Alf McCreary recalls his editor’s leading article in the Belfast Telegraph on 5 November 1968 in which Jack Sayers wrote: The threat to Northern Ireland’s future is not … the IRA or even Nationalism. It comes from Protestant Ulstermen who will not allow themselves to be liberated from the delusion that every Roman Catholic is their enemy. [Ed – some blog post readers will stop at this point and immediately jump down to the …

Book Review: Battle for Britain: Scotland and the Independence Referendum

Tom Gallagher on December 12, 2013, 1:01 pm

| Readers 135

The Battle for Britain: Scotland and the Independence Referendum. By David Torrance. London: Biteback Books 2013. pp.xiv + 370. Paperback. The nature of the policies advocated by those seeking a ‘Yes’ vote in the September 2014 referendum on whether Scotland should depart the 306-year union dominate this timely and often insightful book. Perhaps its main strength is that it conveys the cerebral side of the Scottish National Party (SNP) whose electoral victories in 2007 and 2011 enabled the Scottish Question …

Scotland’s Future … an introductory guide (that shouldn’t be ignored by NI)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on November 27, 2013, 12:01 am

| Readers 87

The Scottish Government’s 670 page long white paper Scotland’s Future was published today. The document reads like a cross between a party manifesto and a giant FAQ. It’s tone is of modernity and a progressive Scotland. Issues around independence are opportunities not challenges – and derivations of “opportunity” appear four times more often than “challenge”. It makes an independent Scotland seem like a more tangible possibility while simultaneously supplying just enough information to spark hundreds of questions in your head …

Beyond Transparency – could NI embrace open data?

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on November 7, 2013, 8:45 am

| Readers 156

Open Data initiatives in Northern Ireland have been – to date – relatively stumbling affairs that fall far behind London-led efforts. (The inability to use Translink timetable and bus stop geocode data to build an independent third-party NI travel app was particularly exasperating.) However, there has been some movement and the alignment of planets, keen civil servants who recognise the benefits and a new Minister of Finance & Personnel Simon Hamilton creates hope that the drawers to the electronic filing …

Alternative Ulsters: Conversations on Identity (Mark Carruthers)

Alan Meban (Alan in Belfast) on November 4, 2013, 9:01 am

| Readers 984

Mark Carruthers describes his new book Alternative Ulsters as a “collection of conversations” and “an attempt to take the notional temperature of a place where identity tends to inform a great deal of the day-to-day civic debate”. The book has a simple structure: three and a half pages of introduction followed by thirty six interviews, arranged in alphabetical order, with public figures connected with Ulster from the world of arts, journalism, politics and sport. Each is quizzed on their connection …

#Lethal Allies: this is not collusion.

John Ó Néill on November 1, 2013, 4:18 pm

| Readers 1183

This is much worse. The publication of Ann Cadwalladers Lethal Allies last month by Mercier Press was always going to have a relatively predictable reception. In many ways, nationalists and republicans have largely accepted that there was participation by members of the security forces in providing intelligence, weapons and targeting information to loyalist/unionist paramilitary groups from the late-1960s onwards. In some cases, it was even clear that either officially or unofficially, security force members and agents being run by the security services directly …

From Arkiv to Haaas. A way out of the deadlock for dealing with the past

Brian Walker on October 30, 2013, 10:36 am

| Readers 97

It’s heart warming to find some of the ideas I’ve been grappling with being taken forward with real authority and integrity. As reported in the Newsletter a firm and positive set of proposals for dealing with the past has been submitted to the Haass talks by a group of historians calling themselves Arkiv. The idea that dealing with the past is a task that can be agreed and dispatched within a given period is not simply an insult to the …

With all this regressive hyperbole about NI’s past, is it time for a new sustainable narrative?

Mick Fealty on October 28, 2013, 9:57 am

| Readers 86

Good piece from Tom Kelly in the Irish News this morning, which subtly identifies the problem with the exaggerated claims of recent stories in the media. At a time when voter registration is falling right across the board, it’s an impoverished narrative to be offering voters who are already switching off from Stormont in droves. He tops out his analysis with a reference to the enormously useful pre publicity Gerry Kelly’s been getting on the 1983 break out from the Maze …

Tony Bailie’s ‘A Verse to Murder’: Book Review

John L. Murphy on October 22, 2013, 12:32 am

| Readers 17

Maurice Burns’ cover merits study–it’s well chosen and ties into this mystery within, as elaborated by an informant. The title, a play off of the ‘murder of crows’, echoes in the name of Barry Crowe, a Belfast journalist (or is it ‘sleazy tabloid hack’?) pursuing the backstory behind the sudden demise, apparently by auto-asphyxiation, of Northern Ireland’s leading poet. The compromising circumstances unfold neatly in this e-book novella. Bailie, whose Lagan Press novels The Lost Chord and Ecopunks delved into …

Vo Nguyen Giap, 1911-2013

John Ó Néill on October 4, 2013, 3:41 pm

| Readers 101

The death has been announced in Hanoi of Vo Nguyen Giap, the self-taught general who drove the French out of Vietnam. His generalship at the pivotal battle of Dien Bien Phu, freeing the North from colonial rule and then later forcing the Americans to abandon their support for the various regimes in South Vietnam, was largely responsible for the eventual re-unification of the country under a communist government in Hanoi. Giap is probably not as well known as the events in …

‘To the winds our sails: Irish writers translate Galician poetry’: Book Review

John L. Murphy on September 25, 2013, 1:17 am

| Readers 123

This 2010 anthology collects five poems each from ten Galician women. Irish poets translate four per poet from an English-language crib, with the remaining one rendered into Irish itself. The results reveal some of the revived enthusiasm and energy emanating from this northwestern corner of Iberia, with its alleged ancient ties to the Celtic lands, as the legendary homeland of the Irish themselves. How such expression cross over linguistic expanses, co-editor Mary O’Donnell observes, raise questions. ‘It remains one of …

Graham Spencer’s Protestant Identity and Peace in Northern Ireland: Can the Churches Contribute?

Gladys Ganiel on September 5, 2013, 8:01 pm

| Readers 271

A recent book by Graham Spencer, Protestant Identity and Peace in Northern Ireland (Palgrave, 2012), provides an insightful complement to a conversation that has been gathering some pace in Northern Ireland’s public sphere: What role, if any, might churches play in our post-violence transition, which right now seems stuck? I’ve raised the question on my own blog, various clergy and ministers have had their say on the airwaves and in newspapers, and Queen’s University’s new ‘Compromise after Conflict’ blog is …

Northern Ireland’s Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism by Tony Novosel — Book Review

Gladys Ganiel on August 23, 2013, 10:49 am

| Readers 477

Northern Ireland’s Lost Opportunity: The Frustrated Promise of Political Loyalism, is a book that has received surprisingly little attention since it was published this year (Pluto Press, 2013). Written by American Tony Novosel, a lecturer in History at the University of Pittsburgh, it is a clearly-written and provocative examination of loyalist political development from the mid-1960s. It is also a timely book, given that loyalism has been ‘in the news’ lately for all the wrong reasons: the flag protests and …

Can the Churches Provide a Vision? Prof John Brewer on Religion, Conflict & Peace

Gladys Ganiel on August 9, 2013, 8:47 am

| Readers 185

Are churches – in concert with other groups in civil society –better placed than our politicians to articulate a vision for the future that is gracious and hopeful? John Brewer, Professor of Post Conflict Studies at the Institute for the Study of Conflict Transformation and Social Justice at Queen’s, thinks so. He has been among those contributing to discussions on the present role of our churches, which has gathered some momentum after the disturbances on the 12th. Brewer’s interventions have …

Colin Broderick’s ‘That’s That’: Book Review

John L. Murphy on August 6, 2013, 9:22 pm

| Readers 262

While the phrase popularized by Seamus Heaney ‘whatever you say, say nothing’ endures as a code for Northern Irish character toughened by the Troubles, Colin Broderick’s telling of his childhood reveals the language unspoken. He gives us a glimpse at those in the IRA who were never by necessity singled out by their supporters, but who carried themselves with an air of entitlement, entrusted as they were by the Catholic community with their protection and their idealism in a time …