A raw, unflinching evocation of a community that's struggling to survive' ... THE TIMES 'Think The Wire, set in Dublin' ... BRIAN McGILLOWAY 'Harsh, tender, steely and authentic' ... LOUISE PHILIPS 'A chilling thriller that reveals the dark and desperate world of Dublin gags in gripping detail' ... SAM BLAKE I killed the boy... Jig loves football and his dog, hates school, misses his dead granda and knows to lie low when his ma's blitzed on the vodka. He's just an ordinary boy on the brutal streets alongside Dublin's Grand Canal. Streets that are ruled by Ghost and his crew. And now Ghost inked, vicious, unprincipled has a job for Jig. A job that no one can afford to go wrong not the gangs, the police, the locals, and least of all not Jig. A taut, compelling crime thriller set in Dublin, perfect for fans of Sam Blake and Alex Barclay. PRAISE FOR BLACK WATER: 'A grimly realistic debut novel . . . a compelling work of darkest noir.' - THE IRISH TIMES 'Violent and gritty, this debut sings with authenticity. I couldn't put it down.' - IRISH EXAMINER 'Dublin Noir at its most raw and dangerously violent... a book with a strong sense of empathy for the dispossessed and not a cheerful one, but a solid achievement in reflecting real life in fiction.' - CRIME TIME 'This is a fast read for all the right reasons and like a writer playing the long game, O'Keeffe leaves plenty up in the damp air.' - RTÉ 'Shocking and compulsive ... O'Keeffe explodes onto the Irish crime fiction scene with style.' - BRIAN MCGILLOWAY, NYT bestselling author of Little Girl Lost 'Set in the parts of Dublin that the tourists are better off not knowing about ... relentlessly depicts a city where the ruthless enlist the desperate to prey on the vulnerable. A terrific debut.' - GENE KERRIGAN, journalist and author of The Rage 'A first class, compelling and gritty debut with real hear. I loved this book.' - ANDREA CARTER, author of The Well of Ice 'O'Keeffe pulls you into the dark underbelly of Dublin city with well-drawn characters, chilling dexterity and unflinching truth' - LOUISE PHILLIPS, author of The Game Changer
This book provides new insights into contemporary betting shops, with a particular focus on the manner in which losing bets are dealt with by customers. Drawing on research undertaken in Ireland, it demonstrates that customers tend to shift responsibility for monetary losses onto factors external to themselves as part of a collective process engaged in to restore self-esteem, and considers the role played by announcements made in betting shops in creating an atmosphere of inclusion - and the implications of this for ‘problem gambling’. Through an analysis of newspaper representations of the first legally operating betting shops in Ireland, which opened in the 1920s, the author places the contemporary betting shop in historical context and examines trends in gambling across the British Isles with reference to social class and the security or precarity of work. An interactionist study not only of gambling but also of responsibility and the connection between the micro-world and social structures, this volume will appeal to sociologists with interests in symbolic interactionism and strategies of blame.
Disrupt and Deny is the untold story behind Britain's secret scheming against both enemies and friends from 1945 to the present day. British leaders use spies and Special Forces to interfere in the affairs of others discreetly and deniably. Since 1945, MI6 has spread misinformation designed to divide and discredit targets from the Middle East to Eastern Europe and Northern Ireland. It has instigated whispering campaigns and planted false evidence on officials working behind the Iron Curtain, tried to foment revolution in Albania, blown up ships to prevent the passage of refugees to Israel, and secretly funnelled aid to insurgents in Afghanistan and dissidents in Poland. MI6 has launched cultural and economic warfare against Iceland and Czechoslovakia. It has tried to instigate coups in Congo, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and elsewhere. Through bribery and blackmail, Britain has rigged elections as colonies moved to independence. Britain has fought secret wars in Yemen, Indonesia, and Oman - and discreetly used Special Forces to eliminate enemies from colonial Malaya to Libya during the Arab Spring. This is covert action: a vital, though controversial, tool of statecraft and perhaps the most sensitive of all government activity. If used wisely, it can play an important role in pursuing national interests in a dangerous world. If used poorly, it can cause political scandal - or worse. In Disrupt and Deny, Rory Cormac tells the remarkable true story of Britain's secret scheming against its enemies, as well as its friends; of intrigue and manoeuvring within the darkest corridors of Whitehall, where officials fought to maintain control of this most sensitive and seductive work; and, above all, of Britain's attempt to use smoke and mirrors to mask decline. He reveals hitherto secret operations, the slush funds that paid for them, and the battles in Whitehall that shaped them.
The 1921 partition of Ireland had huge ramifications for almost all aspects of Irish life and was directly responsible for hundreds of deaths and injuries, with thousands displaced from their homes and many more forced from their jobs. Two new justice systems were created; the effects on the major religions were profound, with both jurisdictions adopting wholly different approaches; and major disruptions were caused in crossing the border, with invasive checks and stops becoming the norm. And yet, many bodies remained administered on an all-Ireland basis. The major religions remained all-Ireland bodies. Most trade unions maintained a 32-county presence, as did most sports, trade bodies, charities and other voluntary groups. Politically, however, the new jurisdictions moved further and further apart, while socially and culturally there were differences as well as links between north and south that remain to this day. Very little has been written on the actual effects of partition, the-day-to-day implications, and the complex ways that society, north and south, was truly and meaningfully affected. Birth of the Border: The Impact of Partition in Ireland is the most comprehensive account to date on the far-reaching effects of the partitioning of Ireland.
This book charts the journey, in terms of both stasis and change, that masculinities and manhood have made in Irish drama, and by extension in the broader culture and society, from the 1960s to the present. Examining a diverse corpus of drama and theatre events, both mainstream and on the fringe, this study critically elaborates a seismic shift in Irish masculinities. This book argues, then, that Irish manhood has shifted from embodying and enacting post-colonial concerns of nationalism and national identity, to performing models of masculinity that are driven and moulded by the political and cultural practices of neoliberal capitalism. Masculinities and Manhood in Contemporary Irish Drama charts this shift through chapters on performing masculinity in plays set in both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland, and through several chapters that focus on Women’s and Queer drama. It thus takes its readers on a journey: a journey that begins with an overtly patriarchal, nationalist manhood that often made direct comment on the state of the nation, and ultimately arrives at several arguably regressive forms of globalised masculinity, which are couched in misaligned notions of individualism and free-choice and that frequently perceive themselves as being in crisis.
Famine remains one of the worst calamities that can befall a society. Mass starvation--whether it is inflicted by drought or engineered by misguided or genocidal economic policies--devastates families, weakens the social fabric, and undermines political stability. Cormac Ó Gráda, the acclaimed author who chronicled the tragic Irish famine in books like Black '47 and Beyond, here traces the complete history of famine from the earliest records to today. Combining powerful storytelling with the latest evidence from economics and history, Ó Gráda explores the causes and profound consequences of famine over the past five millennia, from ancient Egypt to the killing fields of 1970s Cambodia, from the Great Famine of fourteenth-century Europe to the famine in Niger in 2005. He enriches our understanding of the most crucial and far-reaching aspects of famine, including the roles that population pressure, public policy, and human agency play in causing famine; how food markets can mitigate famine or make it worse; famine's long-term demographic consequences; and the successes and failures of globalized disaster relief. Ó Gráda demonstrates the central role famine has played in the economic and political histories of places as different as Ukraine under Stalin, 1940s Bengal, and Mao's China. And he examines the prospects of a world free of famine. This is the most comprehensive history of famine available, and is required reading for anyone concerned with issues of economic development and world poverty.
The Irish Famine of 1846-50 was one of the great disasters of the nineteenth century, whose notoriety spreads as far as the mass emigration which followed it. Cormac O'Gráda's concise survey suggests that a proper understanding of the disaster requires an analysis of the Irish economy before the invasion of the potato-killing fungus, Phytophthora infestans, highlighting Irish poverty and the importance of the potato, but also finding signs of economic progress before the Famine. Despite the massive decline in availability of food, the huge death toll of one million (from a population of 8.5 million) was hardly inevitable; there are grounds for supporting the view that a less doctrinaire attitude to famine relief would have saved many lives. This book provides an up-to-date introduction by a leading expert to an event of major importance in the history of nineteenth-century Ireland and Britain.
In 1152, one man's actions on an unknown battlefield in the Irish midlands set in motion a chain of events which would fundamentally alter the course of Irish history. The abduction of Dearbhforgaill Ní Mhaoilseachlainn, wife of Tiernan Ó Ruairc (King of Breifne) by Diarmuid Mac Murchadha (King of Leinster) lit the spark for a fire which engulfed the island over the following decades. Several years later, when Ó Ruairc's ally had replaced Mac Murchadha's in the High Kingship, Ó Ruairc's actions in expelling his nemesis from Ireland led to the Leinsterman seeking aid from the totemic Plantagenet King of England, Henry II, which assistance gradually morphed into the Cambro-Norman Conquest of Ireland. Over the centuries that followed, the island was divided between the Lordship of Ireland and the surviving Gaelic Kingdoms, while the intersection of these two societies led to the new arrivals becoming - in that famous phrase - more Irish than the Irish themselves. By 1399, as Richard II departed Ireland for the second and final time, the Lordship was whittled down to a series of personal fiefdoms loosely connected to the Dublin administration. From the carnage of the Conquest, through the gradual assertion of the Lordship's power in the late 1100s, we see how Gaelic Ireland eventually re-established itself through a combination of charismatic military tacticians and a series of crippling minorities in the Lordship in the mid-13th century. But with the passing of that dominant generation, the Lordship stemmed the flow through the latter part of the 13th century through its two leading lights, before the heady combination of the Bruce Invasion, the Burke Civil War and the Black Death decimated the island. As the 14th century wore on, it became patently clear that this land of war could never fully be quelled. Even Richard II's visits in the 1390s did little to reverse the tide of the previous century and a half, with the Hiberno-Normans more closely related to Gaelic Ireland than Plantagenet England, and ended with Richard desperately scurrying back to England in a futile attempt to cling to power. While the story of medieval Ireland has been told many times, the various historians have tended to focus on either the Lordship or the Gaelic Kingdoms in isolation, but not on the interactions between these two worlds. Further, most studies of medieval Ireland are purely academic texts -excellent pieces of work upon which I have built this story - which are largely inaccessible to the average reader with a passing interest in Irish history. Instead, the aim of this book is to tell the story of Ireland - not the Lordship, not Gaelic Ireland, but the entire island encompassing the two societies and occasionally its neighbouring realms - in a cohesive narrative, broken into seven distinct periods, each with several smaller chapters, which seeks to entertain as much as inform. Therefore, building on the existing scholarship and the surviving medieval sources, this book tells the story of Ireland from 1152 - 1399 in narrative form for the first time.
Moving the debate beyond the place of tactical intelligence in counterinsurgency warfare, Confronting the Colonies considers the view from Whitehall, where the biggest decisions were made. It reveals the evolving impact of strategic intelligence upon government understandings of, and policy responses to, insurgent threats. Confronting the Colonies demonstrates for the first time how, in the decades after World War Two, the intelligence agenda expanded to include non-state actors, insurgencies, and irregular warfare. It explores the challenges these emerging threats posed to intelligence assessment and how they were met with varying degrees of success. Such issues remain of vital importance today. By examining the relationship between intelligence and policy, Cormac provides original and revealing insights into government thinking in the era of decolonisation, from the origins of nationalist unrest to the projection of dwindling British power. He demonstrates how intelligence (mis-)understood the complex relationship between the Cold War, nationalism, and decolonisation; how it fuelled fierce Whitehall feuding; and how it shaped policymakers' attempts to integrate counterinsurgency into broader strategic policy.
Here Ireland's premier economic historian and one of the leading authorities on the Great Irish Famine examines the most lethal natural disaster to strike Europe in the nineteenth century. Between the mid-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, the food source that we still call the Irish potato had allowed the fastest population growth in the whole of Western Europe. As vividly described in Ó Gráda's new work, the advent of the blight phytophthora infestans transformed the potato from an emblem of utility to a symbol of death by starvation. The Irish famine peaked in Black '47, but it brought misery and increased mortality to Ireland for several years. Central to Irish and British history, European demography, the world history of famines, and the story of American immigration, the Great Irish Famine is presented here from a variety of new perspectives. Moving away from the traditional narrative historical approach to the catastrophe, Ó Gráda concentrates instead on fresh insights available through interdisciplinary and comparative methods. He highlights several economic and sociological features of the famine previously neglected in the literature, such as the part played by traders and markets, by medical science, and by migration. Other topics include how the Irish climate, usually hospitable to the potato, exacerbated the failure of the crops in 1845-1847, and the controversial issue of Britain's failure to provide adequate relief to the dying Irish. Ó Gráda also examines the impact on urban Dublin of what was mainly a rural disaster and offers a critical analysis of the famine as represented in folk memory and tradition. The broad scope of this book is matched by its remarkable range of sources, published and archival. The book will be the starting point for all future research into the Irish famine.
Richard J. Aldrich and Rory Cormac reveal the remarkable relationship between the British Royal Family and the intelligence community, from the reign of Queen Victoria, through two world wars and the Cold War, to the present day. Based on painstaking archival research, the authors have uncovered a wealth of detail that changes our understanding of the role of the monarch in modern British politics, intelligence, and international relations. Far from being a dry tome, on page after page Crown, Cloak, and Dagger offers surprising revelations and stories of intrigue. The book begins with the reign of Queen Victoria, when persistent attempts to assassinate her demanded the creation of security services. Successive queens and kings have all played an active role in steering British intelligence, sometimes running parallel networks against the wishes of prime ministers. Even today, Queen Elizabeth II receives "copy No.1" of every intelligence report and likely knows more state secrets than any person alive. This book demonstrates that even in the era of constitutional monarchy, queens and kings continue to be far more than figureheads of state. Crown, Cloak, and Dagger is a fascinating and fast-paced history that will inform as well as entertain anyone with an interest in history, espionage, and the Royal Family"--
James Joyce's Leopold Bloom--the atheistic Everyman of Ulysses, son of a Hungarian Jewish father and an Irish Protestant mother--may have turned the world's literary eyes on Dublin, but those who look to him for history should think again. He could hardly have been a product of the city's bona fide Jewish community, where intermarriage with outsiders was rare and piety was pronounced. In Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce, a leading economic historian tells the real story of how Jewish Ireland--and Dublin's Little Jerusalem in particular--made ends meet from the 1870s, when the first Lithuanian Jewish immigrants landed in Dublin, to the late 1940s, just before the community began its dramatic decline. In 1866--the year Bloom was born--Dublin's Jewish population hardly existed, and on the eve of World War I it numbered barely three thousand. But this small group of people quickly found an economic niche in an era of depression, and developed a surprisingly vibrant web of institutions. In a richly detailed, elegantly written blend of historical, economic, and demographic analysis, Cormac Ó Gráda examines the challenges this community faced. He asks how its patterns of child rearing, schooling, and cultural and religious behavior influenced its marital, fertility, and infant-mortality rates. He argues that the community's small size shaped its occupational profile and influenced its acculturation; it also compromised its viability in the long run. Jewish Ireland in the Age of Joyce presents a fascinating portrait of a group of people in an unlikely location who, though small in number, comprised Ireland's most resilient immigrant community until the Celtic Tiger's immigration surge of the 1990s.
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