Kevin Myers

Kevin Myers was a young, wide-eyed, and naive outsider thrust into the thick of the conflict in Northern Ireland as it teetered on the brink of civil war. Quickly absorbed into the local community and privy to the secrets of both the Protestant and Catholic paramilitaries, Myers gained a unique perspective into both sides of the sectarian violence.Devoid of any political agenda, Myers describes the streets of Belfast at its bloodiest with searing clarity, capturing every inch of the city's disturbing violence. Flirting with death at every turn, Myers comes of age as the world around him falls apart, fueled by the psychotic rage, senseless murder, and unrelenting terror that surround Northern Ireland's loyalist gangs, paratroopers, police force, and, of course, average citizen.Part unofficial history, part personal memoir, Watching the Door is raw, provocative, and darkly funny, offering an unbridled account of sex, death, and violence in Northern Ireland by one of its most dynamic witnesses.

In this remarkable sequel to his critically acclaimed memoir Watching the Door , Irish journalist Kevin Myers reflects on his roller-coaster career over three decades in the Irish media, from the European conflicts he reported from to the personal conflicts he fought. Fresh from the horrors of 1970s Belfast, Myers took a job in 1979 with The Irish Times, and brilliantly evokes the comical chaos of life in the smoky newsroom of Ireland’s paper-of-record. Having taken over An Irishman’s Diary, Myers single-handedly pioneered the campaign to rehabilitate the memory of the forgotten Irish soldiers of the Great War, and in the process fell foul of the paper’s editor, the legendary Douglas Gageby. His reward were plane tickets to more perilous assignments as Myers was back in the frontline of European warzones, as communism collapsed and civil wars emerged. While Myers’s is at his brilliant best dodging bullets on the battlefields of Tel Aviv, Beirut and Sarajevo, he also keenly and unapologetically participates in the many cultural conflicts erupting within a rapidly changing Ireland, as he opines on a broad spectrum of Irish life, covering history, politics, religion, economics, culture and society; all explored in his inimitable prose and sardonic wit. This courageously trenchant account of journalistic conflict and hubris also forensically examines his very public fall from grace in 2017, and his legal battle with RTÉ for a public apology. Burning Heresies is a candid and eye-opening must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in Irish life and current affairs.

When Gina left Stefan in Dublin airport, 1972, she knew she was making a mistake. But at nineteen, the draw of home and what she knew was stronger than that of love.Twenty years later, stuck in a passionless marriage in small-town Louisiana, Gina can't resist returning to Ireland to find out what might have been. But the world has changed, and people with it: Stefan's Bosnian heritage has swept him down dark, unforeseen paths, to a place that causes him to question his very identity.Moving between Ireland, Louisiana and the stark horrors of war in Bosnia - between love and hate - Banks of Green Willow is a funny, sensuous and deeply moving portrait of the inescapable consequences of 20th century history on commonplace lives.

Since the early 1990s Kevin Myers has been the mainstay of the Irish Times 'Irishman's Diary' column. 'Did you see Myers today?' Often we meant to and didn't. Often we did and hoped, in vain, that we'd be able to recall it later. Outspoken, whimsical, outrageous, sheerly funny, deadly serious - you never knew what to expect. Sometimes Myers is our jester, sometimes our conscience, some times red rag to our bull. This book collects and selects from a decade of the 'Diary' to provide, at last, an intriguing taste of Myers.

Here, name by name, parish by parish, province by province, Kevin Myers details Ireland's intimate involvement with one of the greatest conflicts in human history, the First World War of 1914 to 1918, which left no Irish family untouched. With this gathering of his talks, unpublished essays and material distilled from The Irish Times and elsewhere, Myers lays out the grounds of his research and findings in Connaught, Leinster, Munster and Ulster. He revisits the main theatres of war in Europe - The Somme, Ypres and Verdun, the war at sea and Gallipoli. He documents these bloody engagements through the lives of those involved, from Dublin to Cork, Sligo to Armagh, to the garrison towns of Athy, Limerick, Mullingar and beyond.In Ireland's Great War Myers uncoils a vital counter-narrative to the predominant readings in nationalist history, revealing the complex and divided loyalties of a nation coming of age in the early twentieth century. This remarkable historical record pieced together the neglected shards of Ireland's recent past and imparts a necessary understanding of the political process that saw Sinn Féin's electoral victory in 1918 and the founding of the Irish Free State. By honouring Ireland's forgotten dead on the centenary of the Great War. Myers enables a rediscovery of purpose that will speak to future generations.

Just over a month after the 1921 truce that ended Ireland's fight with Britain, Ernie O'Malley longed for a return to war. Ten months later he got what he wanted but this time civil war against many of the men he had once fought with, those who accepted the new Irish Free State. "No Surrender Here!" is the first comprehensive collection of letters, memoranda and orders detailing this period of chaos and confusion, intransigence and idealism that gripped the country from June 1922 to May 1923. These documents detail the war as it was fought with none of the benefits of hindsight or occasional artistry that mark the memoirs of many of the men involved, not least O'Malley's own carefully crafted narratives, "On Another Man's Wound" and "The Singing Flame".This collection documents one man's attitude to war and his difficult acceptance of peace, his experience of capture, imprisonment, hunger strike and finally release. In these letters, however, this book also captures the voices of both the leadership and the rank and the detached and often inappropriate orders from above, and the confusion of men who know that theirs is a hopeless cause. Letters to friends and family also reveal the more personal costs of war.These fully annotated documents, contextualized with a general introduction by Professor J.J. Lee, provide extraordinary insights into the republican mentality during the Irish Civil War, into what remains a contested and controversial period of modern Irish history.

A memoir like no other, passionate, intelligent and revealing of both the age and the individual.

Immigration and racism are amongst the most controversial topics in English society. This book provides an accessible account of post-war immigration but it also critiques the language of racial, ethnic and cultural difference that emerged to understand racism. Combining history and social theory, Struggles for a Past makes a genuine contribution to debates on English identity, historical memory and contemporary multiculturalism.This book explores how Irish and Afro-Caribbean immigrants were represented in post-war English culture. Beginning with the 1951 Festival of Britain, Struggles for a Past illuminates how dominant perceptions of the national past helped to construct immigrants as outsiders. Those outsiders were understood to pose 'race' problems that required management and intervention. Race relations work had serious shortcomings but it also offered immigrant groups a space and a language to construct their heritage and to deploy historical narratives in pursuit of social justice. In cultural and educational projects, immigrants and their children struggled for their pasts and won recognition as ethnic groups. Yet, as they did so, they became trapped by an ethnic historicism that closed down the possibilities of social justice for all.Written in an accessible manner, and combining history, sociology and education, this book will appeal to students and general readers interested in the history of race ideas, in historical memory and the future of social justice.