In the article we present below, we stop to reflect on A Secret History of the IRA. This theme/figure/character has aroused great interest throughout history, generating debates and analysis in various areas. In this sense, we propose to take a tour through the different edges that make up A Secret History of the IRA, delving into its most relevant aspects and its implications in today's society. In this way, we will seek to delve into its meaning, its repercussions and its presence in culture, providing new perspectives and enriching knowledge about A Secret History of the IRA.
![]() | |
Author | Ed Moloney |
---|---|
Language | English |
Publisher | Penguin Books |
Publication date | 30 September 2002 |
ISBN | 978-0393051940 |
A Secret History of the IRA is a book by journalist Ed Moloney, first published by Penguin Books in 2002.
![]() | This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (May 2013) |
Reviewers responded favorably. In The Blanket, an online journal, reviewer Liam O Ruairc described the book as potentially "the standard if not the definitive work on the history of the Provisional IRA".[1] Eamonn McCann, in The Nation, commented that it was "the best book yet" written on the Provisional IRA as it traced the rise of the Provos from the burning out of Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast in August 1969 to "the enclosure of the movement's leadership within conventional bourgeois politics through the Good Friday Agreement of 1998" (Belfast Agreement).[2]
A central theme in the book is the role that Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams has played in the Irish republican movement. In his review, O Ruairc noted that the book could have been "better titled A Secret History of Gerry Adams".[1] In The Sunday Business Post Online, reviewer Tom McGurk, in reference to the strategy articulated by Danny Morrison at the 1981 Sinn Féin Ard-Fheis, wrote that the book "grippingly" detailed Adams's struggle to move from the Armalite to the ballot box "without a split and without bodies in ditches".[3]
The book was met with controversy because of some of the revelations it contains. Those revelations reveal both a strength and weakness, in that some of Moloney's sources were willing to speak in great detail but with the caveat that they remain confidential.[4]