Belfast

Belfast
Author: W. A. Maguire
Publisher: Carnegie Pub.
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2009
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781859361894

Understanding the past - where we have come from and what has molded us - is important everywhere, and nowhere more so than in Northern Ireland's largest city.

Belfast and Derry in Revolt

Belfast and Derry in Revolt
Author: Simon Prince
Publisher: Merrion Press
Total Pages: 346
Release: 2019-09-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 1788550951

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a civil war started in Northern Ireland. This book tells that story through Belfast and Derry, using original archival research to trace how multiple and overlapping conflicts unfolded on their streets. The Troubles grew out of a political process that mobilised opponents and defenders of the Stormont regime, and which also dragged London and Dublin into the crisis. Drawing upon government papers, police reports, army files, intelligence summaries, evidence to inquiries and parish chronicles, this book sheds fresh light on key events such as the 5 October 1968 march, the Battle of the Bogside, the Belfast riots of August 1969, the ‘Battle of St Matthew’s’ (June 1970) and the Falls Road curfew (July 1970). Prince and Warner offer us two richly-detailed, engaging narratives that intertwine to present a new history of the start of the Troubles in Belfast and Derry – one that also establishes a foundation for comparison with similar developments elsewhere in the world.

Bloody Belfast

Bloody Belfast
Author: Ken Wharton
Publisher: The History Press
Total Pages: 302
Release: 2011-11-08
Genre: History
ISBN: 0752475983

Former soldier Ken Wharton witnessed the troubles in Northern Ireland first hand. Bloody Belfast is a fascinating oral history given a chilling insight into the killing grounds of Belfast's streets. Wharton's work is based on first hand accounts from the soldiers. The reader can walk the darkened, dangerous streets of the Lower Falls, the Divis Flats and New Lodge alongside the soldiers who braved the hate-filled mobs on the newer, but no less violent streets of the 'Murph, Turf Lodge and Andersonstown. The author has interviewed UDR soldier Glen Espie who survived being ambushed and shot by the IRA not once, but twice, and Army Dog Handler Dougie Durrant, who, through the incredible ability of his dog, tracked an IRA gunman fresh from the murder of a soldier to where he was sitting in a hot bath in the Turf Lodge, desperately trying to wash away the forensic evidence. Wharton's reputation for honesty established from previous works has encouraged more former soldiers of Britain's forgotten army to come forward to tell their stories of Bloody Belfast. The book continues the story of his previous work, presenting the truth about a conflict which has sometimes been deliberately underplayed by the Establishment.

Belfast 400

Belfast 400
Author: Sean J. Connolly
Publisher:
Total Pages: 392
Release: 2012
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781846316340

Marking the four-hundredth anniversary of Belfast's foundation, Belfast 400 offers a new history of one of the world's most fascinating—and misunderstood—cities. Drawing on a wide range of research by several scholars, S. J. Connolly shows how Belfast grew to become a place of contested identity and economics and why it would become one of the main theaters of Irish independence and the many violent events that would define it. Belfast and its history are full of contradictions. It was a significant part of Great Britain's rise to industrial greatness, but it is located not on the island of Great Britain, but in Ireland. While it was central to the establishment of a unique Irish identity, its politics and industrial character set it wholly apart from other Irish cities. An important part of the history of Ireland and the United Kingdom both, Belfast has never fit neatly into the accepted narrative of either. Belfast 400 gets beneath these complexities by raising crucial questions at every post along its history. Why, with its seemingly unfavorable position—a waterlogged river mouth—did it become one of the first human settlements in the area? How did it evolve from a minor outpost to a major city, and how did it expand into one of the world's largest centers of shipbuilding and textile manufacturing? What did this industrial development and the eventual decline of manufacturing mean for the people who lived there? Finally, how can Belfast—still managing fraught political relationships between its own citizens—redefine its identity and face the new challenges of the twenty-first century? By raising these and many other questions, Belfast 400 sheds new light on one of the most complex cities in northern Europe.

Belfast Diary

Belfast Diary
Author: John Conroy
Publisher: Beacon Press
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2015-11-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0807002194

“For those puzzled by Northern Ireland, Belfast Diary offers a well-written, sympathetic and clear-eyed view” of life during the Troubles (New York Times Book Review) In the late 1960s, the ongoing conflict between the Protestant unionists and Catholic nationalists of Northern Ireland—divided by their stance on the country’s constitutional position as part of the United Kingdom—escalated to new, terrifying heights. Chicago journalist John Conroy was there on the frontlines, living among the people most affected by it. In Belfast Diary, Conroy offers a street-level view of life in a Catholic Ghetto in West Belfast, painting vivid portraits of its citizens and the violence they faced during the Troubles: bomb threats, murder, police brutality, and more. Conroy’s recounting of this tumultuous moment in Northern Irish history has been hailed as the best explanation of the more than twenty-five-year conflict. Now with a new afterword, Belfast Diary conveys an understanding that is an essential prerequisite to peace: the resolution of intractable problems around the world requires understanding ordinary people as well as leaders.

Belfast

Belfast
Author: Jonathan Bardon
Publisher:
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1982
Genre: History
ISBN:

This best-selling history of Belfast from its beginnings as a river-crossing, through its centuries of radical politics and thrusting commercial enterprise, to its present state, is now established as the definitive book on the subject. Extracts from contemporary letters, newspapers and official reports, together with the memories of ordinary men and women, enrich the lucid and compassionate narrative, vividly evoking the daily life of the city.

How Belfast Got the Blues

How Belfast Got the Blues
Author: Noel McLaughlin
Publisher: Intellect (UK)
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2020
Genre: Popular music
ISBN: 9781789382747

Highly original and fascinating cultural and political history told through Belfast's popular music scene in the 1960s in the context of Northern Ireland's sociopolitical milieu. With particular emphasis on Van Morrison, Them, and Ottilie Patterson; also features the Peter Whitehead film of TheRolling Stones. 15 b/w illus.

Belfast History Tour

Belfast History Tour
Author: Aidan Campbell
Publisher: Amberley Publishing Limited
Total Pages: 63
Release: 2020-03-15
Genre: Photography
ISBN: 1398101869

A guided tour of the historic city of Belfast, showing how the areas you know and love have changed over the centuries.

Belfast Battalion

Belfast Battalion
Author: John O'Neill
Publisher:
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2018-11-23
Genre:
ISBN: 9781999300807

What do we really know about the background to the conflict that began in Ireland in the late 1960s? Up to now little has been written about the I.R.A. in one of the key centres of violence, Belfast, in the decades before 1969. For the first time, this book brings together several years of research to create a detailed history of the Belfast I.R.A. from the 1920s up to the start of the more recent conflict. It addresses key questions such as: Who was in the I.R.A. in Belfast from 1922 to 1969? Who decided on I.R.A. strategy and tactics in the city?Where did it get money, weapons and intelligence?What do we know of its activities?What were the circumstances preceding the rapid increase in size of the Belfast I.R.A. in the early 1970s?Using previously unpublished I.R.A. documents, memoirs, interviews and contemporary accounts, Belfast Battalion explores the rise and fall of political initiatives, the various military campaigns, fatalities, propaganda, prison experiences, punishments, the I.R.A.'s competitors (both political and military) and more. In bringing together a picture of the dynamics and forces that had shaped the Belfast I.R.A. in the decades leading up to 1969, it provides for a richer and more nuanced understanding of one of the key participants in the conflict that then intensified in the early 1970s.Note: paperback copies can be ordered direct from http: //www.litter.press/Dr John O'Neill is originally from Belfast. A former researcher and lecturer in Archaeology in Queens University Belfast and University College Dublin, he has published a number of books on Irish archaeology, mainly prehistory, which was extraordinarily useful preparation for researching a clandestine organisation like the I.R.A.. He keeps a blog on Irish history, mainly on Belfast republicanism, at www.treasonfelony.com

Say Nothing

Say Nothing
Author: Patrick Radden Keefe
Publisher: Vintage
Total Pages: 561
Release: 2020-02-25
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0307279286

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • SOON TO BE AN FX LIMITED SERIES STREAMING ON HULU • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • From the author of Empire of Pain—a stunning, intricate narrative about a notorious killing in Northern Ireland and its devastating repercussions. One of The New York Times’s 20 Best Books of the 21st Century "Masked intruders dragged Jean McConville, a 38-year-old widow and mother of 10, from her Belfast home in 1972. In this meticulously reported book—as finely paced as a novel—Keefe uses McConville's murder as a prism to tell the history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Interviewing people on both sides of the conflict, he transforms the tragic damage and waste of the era into a searing, utterly gripping saga." —New York Times Book Review "Reads like a novel ... Keefe is ... a master of narrative nonfiction. . .An incredible story."—Rolling Stone A Best Book of the Year: The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, TIME, NPR, and more! Jean McConville's abduction was one of the most notorious episodes of the vicious conflict known as The Troubles. Everyone in the neighborhood knew the I.R.A. was responsible. But in a climate of fear and paranoia, no one would speak of it. In 2003, five years after an accord brought an uneasy peace to Northern Ireland, a set of human bones was discovered on a beach. McConville's children knew it was their mother when they were told a blue safety pin was attached to the dress--with so many kids, she had always kept it handy for diapers or ripped clothes. Patrick Radden Keefe's mesmerizing book on the bitter conflict in Northern Ireland and its aftermath uses the McConville case as a starting point for the tale of a society wracked by a violent guerrilla war, a war whose consequences have never been reckoned with. The brutal violence seared not only people like the McConville children, but also I.R.A. members embittered by a peace that fell far short of the goal of a united Ireland, and left them wondering whether the killings they committed were not justified acts of war, but simple murders. From radical and impetuous I.R.A. terrorists such as Dolours Price, who, when she was barely out of her teens, was already planting bombs in London and targeting informers for execution, to the ferocious I.R.A. mastermind known as The Dark, to the spy games and dirty schemes of the British Army, to Gerry Adams, who negotiated the peace but betrayed his hardcore comrades by denying his I.R.A. past--Say Nothing conjures a world of passion, betrayal, vengeance, and anguish.