On the morning of Saturday 22nd April 1978,members of an Active Service Unit of the IRA hijacked a car and crossed the countryside to the town of Lisburn. Within an hour,they had killed an off-duty policeman in front of his young son.In Anatomy of a Killing,award-winning journalist Ian Cobain documents the hours leading up to the killing,and the months and years of violence,attrition and rebellion surrounding it. Drawing on interviews with those most closely involved,as well as court files,police notes,military intelligence reports,IRA strategy papers,memoirs and government records,this is a unique perspective on the Troubles,and a revelatory work of investigative journalism.
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Publisher: Granta BooksISBN: 9781846276422Number of pages: 288Weight: 204 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 17 mm
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By homing in on one man's violent death,Ian Cobain tells a riveting and tragic story but,while doing that,he has also written a precise,compelling history of the Troubles.It's one of the best I've readA remarkable piece of forensic journalism and a worthy addition to the Troubles bookshelfIan Cobain has provided a superb piece of journalism that avoids any moralising or analysing from his own perspective and that has a powerful impact on the reader,forcing the reader to consider the humanity of the players but also leaving space for the reader to make the final judgment on who was right and who was wrong or if the whole sorry mess could have been avoidedAnatomy of a Killing is meticulously researched and the results are arresting. For anyone who grew up in The Troubles,this will be a valuable reminder of just how dark a shadow we lived under. For many others,it will be shocking to discover what people in one part of the British Isles had to endure in recent timesIan Cobain has written a brilliant and balanced account of the ugly war of attrition fought between the IRA and the British state.He traces the interwoven lives of an IRA team,revealing the social divisions,injustices and passions that that led to a brutal killing in the late 1970s.His reconstruction of a forgotten assassination and its reverberations offers a compelling microhistory of the Troubles,and explains why Northern Ireland is still a deeply traumatised societyAn ambitious social and political history of the Troubles,drawing on court files,interviews,police notes and IRA strategy papers... Cobain leaves no perspective unexamined... A deftly rendered history that refuses to simplify a messy and tragic periodA brilliant,captivating,richly illuminating account of a brutal killing. Essential reading for anyone interested in the Northern Ireland conflict
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