Can't say that I was a fan of this one. Way too many facts thrown about in too little time. Felt more like I was reading an encyclopedia than a history book. Probably of much more interest to a student in a graduate level university course. I don't feel right downgrading the author's hard work, so I will not be leaving my review on any of my regular sites.

I haven't explored this area of history before, and I found it really interesting to learn of the involvement between Britain and Ireland (both The Republic, and Northern Ireland). It was uncomfortable and shocking but not unsurprising to learn of organised killings and murder orchestrated by MI5 and the British MOD.

I found it a bit difficult to absorb the information in the book, and would have preferred a more narrative style. I found myself reading and re-reading sections to try and take it all in as it was quite a lot of names and dates and events without any structure. In the end I had to stop trying to take it in as it was jumping backwards and forwards in timeline and just try and learn some key bits.

DESCRIPTION:
“It is, of course, no secret that undercover Special Forces and intelligence agencies operated in Northern Ireland and the Republic throughout the ‘troubles’, from 1969 to 2001 and beyond. What is less well known is how these units were recruited, how they operated, what their mandate was and what they actually did. This is the first account to reveal much of this hitherto unpublished information, providing a truly unique record of surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, collusion and undercover combat.”

I thought this book was terrific for what it was.. a brief description of the people that played vital roles in what's called The Troubles. I believe that this is a good read for anyone interested in learning more about The Troubles in Northern Ireland. It’s packed with detailed information as it pertains to the facts of numerous murders & violent events in an unbiased manner.

One of the main problems that I have with this book is that it gives you a load of information all at once. I believe that the reader would be lost and uninterested if they were not already aware of what The Troubles were. Once the author took a step back from the numbers & statistics and went more into the history of events, I enjoyed it!

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Pen & Sword Military for the advanced copy in exchange for an honest review.

BOOK QUOTE:
“Republicans and Nationalists were matched in their paramilitary activity during the troubles by loyalists intent on championing Unionism, protecting Protestant communities, and ruthlessly retaliating against Republican violence.”

#PamelaReads2021 #NorthernIrelandTheTroubles #NetGalley #PenAndSwordPublishing
#100BooksIn2021 #ReadingChallenge2021

NOTE: I received a free preliminary, and likely unedited copy of this book from Netgalley for the purposes of providing an honest, unbiased review of the material. Thank you to all involved.

Being a member of the Irish Diaspora, I try to occasionally learn something about my ancestral homeland’s history when I can. We’re talking usually ancient history, so I felt that I was severely lacking in my knowledge of more recent events. Its no secret that American schools usually don’t go over details about world events of recent memory, and corporate news largely ignores anything that is not politics anymore. So unless I decide that Cranberries and U2 song lyrics will be my only window into “The Troubles”, I figured a book would be in order! That’s why I was excited for my opportunity to read Northern Ireland: The Troubles: From The Provos to The Det, 1968–1998. This appears to be the newest book in a series called History of Terror including books on Islamic State and Zulu Guerilla attacks.

"It is, of course, no secret that undercover Special Forces and intelligence agencies operated in Northern Ireland and the Republic throughout the ‘troubles’, from 1969 to 2001 and beyond. What is less well known is how these units were recruited, how they operated, what their mandate was and what they actually did. This is the first account to reveal much of this hitherto unpublished information, providing a truly unique record of surveillance, reconnaissance, intelligence gathering, collusion and undercover combat. An astonishing number of agencies were active to combat the IRA murder squads (‘the Provos’), among others the Military Reaction Force (MRF) and the Special Reconnaissance Unit, also known as the 14 Field Security and Intelligence Company (‘The Det’), as well as MI5, Special Branch, the RUC, the UDR and the Force Research Unit (FRU), later the Joint Support Group (JSG)). It deals with still contentious and challenging issues as shoot-to-kill, murder squads, the Disappeared, and collusion with loyalists. It examines the findings of the Stevens, Cassel and De Silva reports and looks at operations Loughgall, Andersonstown, Gibraltar and others." --Book description.

I will confess, my knowledge of “The Troubles”, prior to this book, boiled down to my assumption that the whole thing was a guerilla war between the IRA and the UK military, not realizing there were dozens of various paramilitary groups acting in their own self-interests, some nationalist, some loyalist, others seemingly agents of chaos, ever splintering into more groups and in-fighting the entire time. trying to sift through all of the allegiances, and goals for these various groups was hard, but I feel like I learned a lot more from it.

I will say that, perhaps, one flaw of the book is that it dumps a ton of information on you all at once assuming you have a passing knowledge of the topic – Since I was remedial at best, a lot of the beginning of the book just washed over me. I understand that I, an American far distanced from The Troubles, isn’t likely the author’s target audience, but maybe a more “training wheels” introduction would be in order if a second edition were to ever be made. Once the book took a step away from statistics and went more into a narrative history of the events, I was sold on it. Later sections went over prominent players in each “side” of the conflict, their origins, goals, and what sort of terror they caused. The information is in depth, and conveys the terror that everyone had to deal with for so long.

“Republicans and Nationalists were matched in their paramilitary activity during the troubles by loyalists intent on championing Unionism, protecting Protestant communities, and ruthlessly retaliating against Republican violence.” -- Book quote

Most-jarring for me, but honestly not a big surprise, was the revelation that the British Military had a hand in basically supporting some of the loyalist murder squads. I mean, sure, everyone could assume that the old saying “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, but it goes a bit far when that “friend” is killing civilians. This was revealed via documents that were recently de-classified that the author discussed in the book.

Care is made, by the author, to not take a side for the most part, any of the various paramilitary “murder squads” are all painted as ruthless and somewhat evil in their doings. I appreciated this, as most books on terrorism, and counter-insurgency that I’ve read are very one-sided and downplay the reasons behind the behavior. I wasn’t expecting a pro-Britain book or anything, but the honesty was refreshing.

I enjoyed this book a lot, It’s very dense with information and covers a lot of ground. I think its written a bit too much like a government analytical report meant to debrief a law enforcement agent or something, but it wasn’t hard to read or anything – its just VERY heavily with numbers and statistics. Having any prior knowledge of the events is also a plus. This is definitely a series that I plan to check out more of, I feel like I learned quite a bit.

I love books on Ireland. However, this one threw a lot of terms at you (yes it has a glossary to refer to for it) with lots of dates and events. However only small descriptions of these. It also felt jumbled to me and this make it hard to take in. Unfortunately this book was just not for me. I will not be reviewing it elsewhere.

For thirty years 'The Troubles' in Northern Ireland was a regular part of our daily news reports and media coverage, whilst one or two groups frequently made the headlines there was a number of other agencies and players involved in this 'dirty war' and this book doesn't just look at the main players it looks at who else was there, how they came to be and what their role was.

There are many books about this period of history and I found this one interesting because it identifies in three sections; Nationalist paramilitaries, Loyalist paramilitaries and the third covering the various military, police and intelligence agencies, focusing not only on the main units and organisations but also the lesser known ones, telling what they did and what connections they had with each other. The closing chapters deal with the inquiries that followed and how they themselves were hampered by lies and deceit, with many documents being deliberately misplaced or destroyed in an attempt to cover-up actions and events that took place.

A well written and thought provoking account not just for those that were there but also for anyone who has an interest in this not so distant part of our history.

My thanks to Pen & Sword Military for the review copy, I was under no obligation and all opinions expressed are my own.

An absorbing and informative read!

This book is well researched and well written. I was a youngster at the beginning of the troubles so looked forward to learning more about the topic. The book details the troubles from their beginning to the ceasefire, expertly describing both sides of the conflicts. The collusion of the uk government was a revelation to me although not completely incredulous.

This subject matter makes me feel uneasy at the lives lost and the turmoil caused , which it seems certain UK government agencies intensified instead of being the peace keeping force .

Thanks to NetGalley and Pen & Sword Military for this arc copy.

I knew that this was a book that I wanted to read as soon as I read the blurb for the book and I was not disappointed – it was full of interesting facts and detail and I had it read in a day.

I liked the layout of the book and as I was reading it, I was encouraged to look on the internet and find out more on a few of the news stories and it was great to see the photos that were added to bring the period to life. I liked the author explaining too the focus of the troubles and that it is not just a simple case of Protestants v Catholics too as many are still led to believe.

I think that photos are really needed in a book like this to demonstrate the human impact more that just words can do – after all they are right in that a picture is worth a thousand words even if some of these images used are upsetting, they are right to be added.

The Troubles were already going on when I was born so I didn’t know that much about the back story, only what I had previously read so it was great to be able to read a book that focussed on the origins through to the signing of the Good Friday Agreement (which actually being signed on my 16th birthday) and the issues that took place after this until a ceasefire a halt was finally called by the main protagonists.

It is 5 stars from me for this one, I found it to be an additive read even of the subject matter at times was tough and the impact of some of the actions on the innocent families involved is truly harrowing.

This is a fairly brief volume on The Troubles that existed throughout Northern Ireland for roughly thirty years. It certainly does the job in illustrating for people how bloody that conflict was both through narratives of seminal events and statistics. The problem with this book is that all of that information tended to swirl together to the point where it became page after page of violent attacks to the point where any of the individual actors or groups ceased to exist and they became just another victim of The Troubles. I will leave that to individual readers to determine whether that's a bad thing or just illustrative of the cycles of violence that occurred during the Troubles.

Thank you to NetGalley and Pen & Sword Military Publishers for granting my wish to read "Northern Ireland: The Troubles: From The Provos to the Det, 1968-1998) in exchange for my honest opinion.

This book is part of the History of Terror Series. Mr. Lesley-Dixon has written a well-researched book on the history of The Troubles. He starts out at the beginning - with how things came to be. He tells of the common assumption that The Troubles were simply a religious conflict between the majority Protestant loyalists and the minority Catholic nationalist. He clearly presents both sides. He details everyone that was involved in the conflict. The book has facts and figures for anyone doing research on this time period. There are also many photographs in the book to illustrate what he has written.

Mr. Lesley-Dixon writes about Bloody Sunday in 1972 right up to and including the Good Friday Agreement in April 1998. I would recommend this book for anyone that is looking to learn about The Troubles. This book is very informative and presents the facts in easy to understand writing.

Nonfiction is not a genre I read often, but I find The Troubles of Northern Ireland a grimly fascinating period of history.

While I would have liked a more narrative feel to this (as I do with all nonfiction, not just this book), it is evident that this is very well researched. But with the short length and very cut and dry facts, this just feels like expanded encyclopedia entries on the topic. There were times when I found myself much more interested in the accompanying photographs rather than the text.

But regardless of my personal preferences, this is a highly informative read, one I am sure many people will learn from.