By Síle Darragh
Beyond the Pale Publications, Belfast. Price €12

Reviewed by Laurence McKeown
Former H-Blocks prisoner

THE FIRST THING I like about this book is its wonderful title. It’s original. It’s thought-provoking. You wonder what exactly John Lennon’s death has to do with republican prisoner activities of protest, hunger strikes, and general acts of resistance – but... Free article

23rd Desmond Greaves Summer School

THE 23rd Desmond Greaves Summer School will be held at the Pearse Centre in Dublin over the weekend 9 to 11 September 2011. Desmond Greaves was a historian and a Marxist, who wrote extensively on Irish labour history. He wrote important books on James Connolly, Liam Mellows, and the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union. The School is... Free article

ONE OF FIANNA FÁIL’S most outspoken TDs has said leader Mícheál Martin decided against running a party candidate in the Presidential election because planning tribunal reports on corrupt payments to politicians expected to be released during the campaign are likely to be damaging to Fianna Fáil.

Noel O’Flynn, who was a high-profile and vocal TD for Cork North Central until... Free article

SINN FÉIN and SIPTU have both hit out at today’s call by the Economic and Social Research Institute for an accelerated austerity policy that will impose more pain on a public already under pressure paying the debts of the bankers, speculators and gamblers.

Sinn Féin TD Peadar Tóibín said the ESRI was recommending a more right-wing approach to the economy than even the... Free article

A SHORT PLAY by Belfast playwright Roseleen Walsh chronicles the legacy of Ireland's 22 hunger strike martyrs of the 20th century from Thomas Ashe in 1917 to Mickey Devine in 1981.

BERTIE AHERN will brand some members of his celebrated Fianna Fáil machine in Dublin Central as “useless” in a TV3 series, The Rise and Fall of Fianna Fáil, beginning next week.

The Irish Independent reports today that the former Fianna Fáil leader and Taoiseach says in the three-part series:

A lot of people [cumann members] had tea parties in the '70s and '80s and met to... Free article

THERE IS A PHRASE in Latin that perhaps best sums up the Donegal approach to football – reductio ad absurdum (reduction to the absurd).

All we need now is for another team to follow their example and we will, in time, have the first scoreless Gaelic football match in history.

Pat Gilroy was magnanimous in victory and had Donegal won I would not be saying any of this. Dublin... Free article

STATE COLLUSION with pro-British death squads in Ireland has been a policy of the British Government. Hundreds of citizens were murdered as a result of the actions sanctioned by the British Government.

An Fhirinne (the group campaigning to highlight collusion between the British Crown forces and unionist paramilitaries) and Clara Reilly are appealing for anyone wishing to... Free article

THE LIBYAN REBELS’ propaganda war is being masterminded by Margaret Thatcher’s close friend and former top media adviser, Tim Bell.

Tim Bell guided Thatcher to three successive general election victories. In 1984, Bell was seconded to Britain's National Coal Board to advise on media strategy at the start of the miners' strike.

He has lobbied on behalf of the Saudi Arabian... Free article