Malachi O'Doherty

2 weeks ago | belfasttelegraph.co.uk | Malachi O'Doherty

I have had two fake strokes. The first was 10 years ago when I woke up on holiday after an afternoon nap and didn’t know where I was. The room and surrounding area seemed only vaguely familiar. I told my wife about a dream I’d just had and she told me I was recounting what we had actually done that morning. My confusion deepened. She tested me by asking what book I was writing at the time. I had no notion that I was writing a book at all.

3 weeks ago | irishtimes.com | Malachi O'Doherty

This book is a valuable contribution to the literature of the Troubles period and the history of the IRA. Jonathan Trigg has secured interviews with several former British soldiers and IRA members, many under pseudonyms. This is new material. The weaknesses in the book are that it is not strong on political analysis and that it accepts simplistic versions of key events such as the Battle of the Bogside and the Falls Road rioting of August 1969.

3 weeks ago | irishpost.com | Malachi O'Doherty

I FIRST met Andy Tyrie, the leader of an armed loyalist group, who died last week, in 1986. A BBC religious affairs programme, Sunday Sequence on Radio Ulster, had started hiring me as a freelance reporter and interviewing Tyrie was one of my first jobs. He was of interest to a religious affairs programme because the producers thought he might have thoughts on how much loyalist violence against Catholics was religiously motivated.

1 month ago | belfasttelegraph.co.uk | Malachi O'Doherty

Daily Headlines Newsletter Receive today's headlines directly to your inbox every morning and evening Please check your inbox to verify your details

1 month ago | irishpost.com | Malachi O'Doherty

THE great historian ATQ Stewart, in The Narrow Ground, compared the violence in Belfast in 1970 to the 19th century crashing up through the cobbles. Andrew Boyd wrote Holy War In Belfast before the violence started and it was published to meet huge enthusiastic demand, just as we were getting familiar with the sound of gunfire in the night. What both books reminded us of was that sectarian division, such as was destroying the city, had torn Belfast apart before, indeed before most of us were born.