This book discusses the ancient Celtic beliefs about death and how these were assimilated by Christianity: the importance which the ancient Celts and early Christians placed on blood; and how the Christian Church transmuted the vampire from an ancestor's ghost to a malevolent demon. Stories of spooky, mystical, and bloody tales are relayed.

"Highly readable" – Irish News "A gripping appraisal of Northern Ireland's turbulent first century. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand how we have got to where we are today." – Suzanne Breen, Belfast Telegraph "A timely and lucid analysis of the Troubles that asks hard questions of successive British governments. The good news for the current government is that it also offers some answers." – Rory Carroll, The Guardian *** "For God's sake, bring me a large Scotch. What a bloody awful country!" Home Secretary Reginald Maudling, returning from his first visit to Northern Ireland in 1970 As a long and bloody guerrilla war staggered to a close on the island of Ireland, Britain beat a retreat from all but a small portion of the country – and thus, in 1921, Northern Ireland was born. That partition, says Kevin Meagher, has been an unmitigated disaster for Nationalists and Unionists alike. Following the fraught history of British rule in Ireland, a better future was there for the taking but was lost amid political paralysis, while the resulting fifty years of devolution succeeded only in creating a brooding sectarian stalemate that exploded into the Troubles. In a stark but reasoned critique, Meagher traces the landmark events in Northern Ireland's century of existence, exploring the missed signals, the turning points, the principled decisions that should have been taken, as well as the raw realpolitik of how Northern Ireland has been governed over the past 100 years. Thoughtful and sometimes provocative, What a Bloody Awful Country reflects on how both Loyalists and Republicans might have played their cards differently and, ultimately, how the actions of successive British governments have amounted to a masterclass in failed statecraft.

Presents eyewitness accounts of the massacre which took place January 30, 1972 in Derry, Northern Ireland during an anti-internment march in which the British Army opened fire and consequently killed fourteen people and wounded thirteen.

In this remarkable book, Belfast-born Derek Lundy uses the lives of three of his ancestors as a prism through which to examine what memory and the selective plundering of history has made of the truth in Northern Ireland. In Ulster the name 'Lundy' is synonymous with 'traitor'. Robert Lundy was the Protestant governor of Londonderry in 1688, just before it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. Robert Lundy ordered the city's capitulation. Crying 'No Surrender', hardline Protestants prevented it and drove him away in disgrace. William Steel Dickson's legacy is a little different. A Presbyterian minister born in the mid-eighteenth century, he preached with famous eloquence in favour of using whatever means necessary to resist the tyranny of the English. Finally there is 'Billy' Lundy, born in 1890, the embodiment of what the Ulster Protestants had become by the beginning of World War I - a tribe united in their hostility to Catholics and to the concept of a united Ireland. The lives of Robert Lundy, William Steel Dickson and Billy Lundy encapsulate many themes in the Ulster past. In telling their stories, Derek Lundy lays bare the harsh and murderous mythologies of Northern Ireland and gives us a revision of its history that seems particularly relevant in today's world.

Within the grand narrative of the Battle of Waterloo – one that marks the end of Napoleon’s career as conqueror and the beginning of an extended peace in western Europe – little is known of the formidable efforts made by the Irish who supplemented the strength of the British Army and, in no small measure, directed the outcome of this vital moment in the history of the world. Through empirical research, Dan Harvey has delivered a book that reveals the manoeuvres that the Irish mounted against the French and the courage that they displayed at so many points within the confrontation. Harvey examines attacks from the French infantry, cavalry and Imperial Guard, revealing how Irish soldiers bore the brunt of Napoleon’s frontal assault; they suffered many casualties but were also witness to countless feats of valour. A Bloody Day brings the actions of the Irish at Waterloo into focus, unravelling the true import of their deeds on Sunday, 18 June 1815.

"In the 1960s, African Americans protested for equal rights in the United States. In the 1970s, Catholics demanded equality in Northern Ireland. Catholics were influenced by the American civil rights movement. But peaceful protests erupted into violence on two fateful days. [This book] explores the legacies of the Bloody Sunday in Alabama and the Bloody Sunday in Northern Ireland"--Amazon.com.

Covering both the north and south of Ireland, this book provides stories of 12 Irish murders, all committed by women. It contains drownings, shootings, stabbings and savage clubbings, as well as highlighting the methods by which some of Ireland's female killers disposed of their victims' corpses.