Tim Pat Coogan's Blog

Tim Pat reviews ‘Voices From the Grave’ by Ed Moloney for the Irish Independent…

Back in the sixties, when I was starting to research my book on the IRA, Andrew Boyd arranged that I be brought to Belfast’s Linenhall Library where I was sworn to secrecy, brought down to a locked basement wherein a locked steel box was opened and I was given access to the library’s collection of IRA documents — a few handbills and a copy of the booklet Operation Harvest, which was written by a former sub-editor colleague of mine on the Evening Press, Sean Cronin.

Such was the impact of the Special Powers Act and the state of republican documentation at the time. Consequently, as a writer committed to the principles of free speech, I must support the appearance of Ed Moloney’s Voices from the Grave.

But the support has to be accompanied by a health, or rather a provenance, warning.

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Niall O’Dowd went from being an ordinary Irish emigrant to the US in the late ’70s to playing a key role in the peace process. Now he has written his autobiography, ‘An Irish Voice’.

Read Tim Pat’s review from the Irish Independent:

I have always thought of Niall O’Dowd as the contemporary equivalent of John Boyle O’Reilly, the 19th-century Meath-born Irish nationalist who became both the foremost Irish-American journalist of his day and the leading proponent of a political, non-violent settlement of Ireland’s difficulties.

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Reviewed a controversial new book suggesting that Eamon de Valera was a British spy for the Irish Independent…

“John Turi, author of England’s Greatest Spy: Eamon de Valera, described as a former US Naval Intelligence Officer, has already achieved one remarkable outcome with his book (published on Monday). He has made of me a de Valera defender!”

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