United States Congressman Peter King has found himself the subject of vitriolic abuse from the usual suspects in the Tory British press with the publication of his first novel, Terrible Beauty, which he has set in the Six Counties.

When Tom Clancy and his bold type ilk set their formulaic thrillers in Ireland or in situations featuring Irish guerillas, the results are unerringly predictable. The Oirish characters are usually bloodthirsty psychopaths bent on wiping out as many `Brits' as possible, and beggar the consequences.

But dare try to write a book grounded in reality, rather than using the North as a convenient backdrop for the good guys to take on the evil terrorists, and the vipers of the right-wing press start sharpening their poison pens.

The criticism is something Peter King likely wears as a badge of pride, because his novel is unashamedly written from the point of view of a Belfast woman suffering through some of the worst excesses the British state could inflict in its dirty war against the nationalist and republican community in the 1980s.

Congressman King has been a regular visitor to Ireland for many years. He is a key participant in the peace process and a diligent worker promoting Irish justice issues in the United States. He is very familiar with the discrimination, persecution, human rights abuses and minor everyday oppressions that confront northern nationalists and has been an unerring voice in highlighting these abuses and attempting to redress them. It is this knowledge of state-sponsored violence and discrimination that he relates in a fictional arena with the story of Bernadette Hanlon's path towards involvement in the IRA. Hers is a road lined with arrests, supergrass trials, loyalist assassinations, fallen Volunteers, child victims of plastic bullets and all the other trappings of Britain's dirty war in Ireland, a burden that forces her to take the decision to fight back. That road leads from Ireland to the United States and back again, showing at least a glimmer of hope for a resolution amid the bleakness of war and loss.

If his book sometimes overly displays his personal feelings at the expense of drama, it is merely a measure of how deeply the situation in the Six Counties and the knowledge of nationalist grievance and persecution has affected King over the years. All in all, an honest opening effort.

BY MARTIN SPAIN



This slender volume feels like an introduction to a more substantial piece of work. Renwick sets out to explore the reasons why so many former British army soldiers, particularly those who have served in Ireland, end up serving prison sentences, often for crimes of quite astonishing brutality. However, the work he has done raises more questions about the topic than it manages to answer.

The central premise of the text is that many of these former soldiers are suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), brought about by their experience of the conflict in the Six Counties. Their brutalization in the `morally corrupting' atmosphere of colonial warfare creates, Renwick argues, a trauma which is directly played out both in psychological breakdown and psychotic behaviour after their return to civilian life.

Although Renwick has done some good research - the book is crammed with instances of former soldiers indulging in violently criminal activities - what it lacks is a sufficiently coherent and systematic analysis of PTSD and its external effects. Merely describing the symptoms and providing anecdotal evidence of their effects is not enough, and several promising avenues of investigation are left unexplored.

For example, one question which arises is this: Is there a difference in the type of PTSD experienced by those who have witnessed atrocity during conflict and those who have indulged in it? Much of what Renwick has discovered suggests strongly that there is a qualitative difference in the behavioural patterns of men who have been traumatised by what they have seen and those who are traumatised by what they have done. What, if any, relationship is there between indulging in random violence or atrocity whilst in military service and subsequent violence in civilian life?

It is interesting in this respect that Renwick uses Shakespeare's description of the heroic soldier of Henry IV Part I, Hotspur, to illustrate the effects of PTSD; sleeplessness, loss of appetite and libido and the onset of depression. No accusations of atrocity can be levelled against Hotspur and a useful Shakespearean comparison of his symptoms might be made with those experienced by Macbeth, who descends from being a fearsome soldier who has ``supp'd full with horrors'' of battle into a calculating criminal who indulges in a murderous rampage of unparalleled ferocity, including the slaughter of women and children.

Furthermore, it can be argued that Macbeth's brutality is latent in his psychological makeup and is merely triggered by his encounter with the witches. In Renwick's account, what is also left unexplored is whether those with previously undiscovered violent or socially deviant tendencies are drawn towards the armed forces where those tendencies are often given full rein. To understand why one soldier commits atrocities it is surely necessary to understand why another, in the same situation, does not, and understanding this may also illuminate the variations in the effects of PTSD on different individuals.

But perhaps in arguing this I am letting the army off the hook, because illustrated very well by Renwick in his use of soldiers' accounts is its absolute ability to churn out amoral killers. One former soldier explains that, ``...The circumstances of our training, coupled with our peculiar existence in Northern Ireland ... turned us into savages. We begged and prayed for a chance to fight, to smash, to kill, to destroy...''.

And although this book is superficially about soldiers, those who were fought, smashed, killed and destroyed haunt its pages like Banquo's ghost.