The Boys of St. Columb's chronicles the schooldays of eight illustrious alumni of St. Columb's College in Derry, Northern Ireland, and the political consequences of their education. A companion to a BBC/RTÉ documentary film, The Boys of St. Columb’s (2010), this book traces the first generation of children to receive free grammar school education as a result of the groundbreaking 1947 Education Act in the region. The boys were Bishop Edward Daly, SDLP leader and Nobel Peace Prize–winner John Hume, poet and Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney, critic Seamus Deane, diplomat James Sharkey, activist Eamonn McCann, and musicians Phil Coulter and Paul Brady. Maurice Fitzpatrick incorporates extensive interviews with this group of extraordinary figures five decades after they graduated, and their stories still resonate today with unique reflections on their backgrounds and their coming of age. The book’s historical relevance has continued to grow since it first appeared in 2010, and the narrative can be viewed in a new light as a result of the current political realities in the UK and Ireland.

John Hume, Ireland’s greatest peace-maker, is widely recognised as the architect of the Northern Ireland peace process. In John Hume in America, Maurice Fitzpatrick explores how Hume created this framework for peace through the cultivation of an unprecedented and bountiful relationship with the White House and the US Congress. John Hume’s political vision and innate sense of diplomacy persuaded key players in US politics to merge their concerns with his own. Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill, Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Hugh Carey – together known as the ‘Four Horsemen’ – were won over to his cause, lending the campaign for equality in Northern Ireland worldwide credibility and putting considerable pressure on the British and Irish governments to strive for peace. Through his work with the ‘Four Horsemen’, Hume engaged every American president from Jimmy Carter to Bill Clinton. John Hume in America, a towering achievement, supported by the Hume family, explores the intricate negotiations that made this possible and highlights Hume’s paramount role in leveraging Irish–America. Maurice Fitzpatrick’s seminal work is the missing piece in the jigsaw of Hume’s political life, tracing his philosophy of non-violence during the Civil Rights Movement through to his indispensable work with friends in the US towards the creation of a new political framework in Northern Ireland.

John Hume - civil rights activist, founding member of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and leading politician in Northern Ireland during the long period of the Troubles - gained worldwide recognition and respect for his principled opposition to the use of violence as a means of resolving the deep divisions between the people of Northern Ireland, between those who favor Irish unity and those who favor maintaining the union with Britain. His constant message was the need to heal sundered relationships between the people of Ireland, north and south, and between the people of Ireland and Britain. This book of essays assesses John Hume's role throughout the Troubles as he campaigned in Ireland, Europe, and the US to influence politicians and opinion makers in the cause of justice and peace. These essays discuss: the political background to his entry into public life in 1960s Derry as a champion of the credit union movement * the civil rights campaign * the Sunningdale Agreement * the failed efforts to establish a power-sharing executive * the trauma of terrorism * the hunger strikes * his role in Europe and the US * the Anglo-Irish Agreement * the Hume-Adams dialogue * the Good Friday Agreement. [Subject: Irish Studies, Politics, History]

Fifteen minutes before five o'clock on Good Friday, 1998, Senator George Mitchell was informed that his long and difficult quest for an Irish peace accord had succeeded--the Protestants and Catholics of Northern Ireland, and the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, would sign the agreement. Now Mitchell, who served as independent chairman of the peace talks for the length of the process, tells us the inside story of the grueling road to this momentous accord. For more than two years, Mitchell, who was Senate majority leader under Presidents Bush and Clinton, labored to bring together parties whose mutual hostility--after decades of violence and mistrust--seemed insurmountable: Sinn Fein, represented by Gerry Adams; the Catholic moderates, led by John Hume; the majority Protestant party, headed by David Trimble; Ian Paisley's hard-line unionists; and, not least, the governments of the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom, headed by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair. The world watched as the tense and dramatic process unfolded, sometimes teetering on the brink of failure. Here, for the first time, we are given a behind-the-scenes view of the principal players--the personalities who shaped the process--and of the contentious, at times vitriolic, proceedings. We learn how, as the deadline approached, extremist violence and factional intransigence almost drove the talks to collapse. And we witness the intensity of the final negotiating session, the interventions of Ahern and Blair, the late-night phone calls from President Clinton, a last-ditch attempt at disruption by Paisley, and ultimately an agreement that, despite subsequent inflammatory acts aimed at destroying it, has set Northern Ireland's future on track toward a more lasting peace.

"John Hume is regarded as the key architect of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement. This book collects extracts from Hume's speeches, articles and interviews, and adds a contextual narrative. The selected texts chronicle his entire career, covering his entry into public life in the early 1960s through the credit union, the Derry Housing Association and the civil rights movement, his first election to the Northern Ireland Parliament, the foundation of the SDLP, his influence over successive Irish governments, and the various initiatives aimed at ending the violence and achieving an acceptable agreement. This book provides a comprehensive overview of Hume's political thoughts, his comments on critical events and developments, and his proposals for resolving the Northern Irish conflict. Hume's commitment to human rights, and his implacable opposition to violence as a means of addressing conflict emerge from the texts, as does his transformative influence on the development of Irish and British attitudes and policies, as governments grappled with the problems arising from the troubled relationships within and between the two islands"--Publisher's website.

In Albert Reynolds: Risktaker for Peace, Conor Lenihan takes the reader on a journey through the former Taoiseach’s fascinating life. From his early days in Roscommon, Reynolds’ determination and hard work saw him rise from a humble clerical job with Irish Rail to become one of Ireland’s best-known showbiz promoters. But it is as creator of the template for peace on the island of Ireland that he, deservedly, will be best remembered. Reynolds’ extraordinary progress from the cut-throat world of business to local politics, and, ultimately, government ministries, was driven by the entrepreneurial spirit and impatience that became the hallmark of his success and his failure. Appointed as Taoiseach in 1992, by 1994 he had been drummed out of office, yet in that brief period he confounded his critics by fast-tracking an end to the violence of the Troubles, with the IRA and Loyalist ceasefires. In the first complete biography of Reynolds, former Minister of State Conor Lenihan delivers an insider’s account that reveals the courageous personal risks Reynolds took to create the template for peace in Ireland, and the highs and lows of a tempestuous, risk taking life.

Awake in America seeks to establish a conversation between Irish and Irish American literature that challenges many of the long-accepted boundaries between the two.