'Bandit Country': The IRA and South Armagh

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If you walked down through the town you’d be guaranteed your bag would be taken off you by the soldiers — Oisín McConville With a population of less than 1,200 during that period, there were between 2,000 and 3,000 British troops in and around the republican stronghold. Today, there are none. Access-restricted-item true Addeddate 2013-09-05 20:57:26 Bookplateleaf 0004 Boxid IA1178212 City London Donor In a thriller you obviously need your good guys and you need your bad guys. Knowing that the author of Bandit Country is an Englishman, living in England during the time of 'the troubles' and therefore absorbing things the way the English press reported them, you should have no problem knowing who the bad guys in this story will be.

I remember we started to be successful at the football and going into him one day, and he says, ‘this is brilliant, we’ll no longer be known as bandit country, we’ll be known for the football we play’.I read this for the first time a few years ago. Then, I knew very little about the situation in Northern Ireland and even less about the IRA, except for what I heard from my then-fiance/now-husband, who grew up there. So from the perspective of going into this subject with almost no context, I found that this book did a good job explaining everything, giving a lot of details and a lot of context about a complex situation with many different perspectives. Definitely I would recommend it on those grounds alone. The idea of a Tourist Information office in the troubled Crossmaglen would have been almost unthinkable before the Belfast Agreement. Today Úna Walsh is an ambassador who leads walking tours in the village. Photograph: Stephen Davison

Sniper at Work” road signs with silhouettes of gunmen are gone and an occasional police car patrols a town where soldiers and police only ever travelled by helicopter for fear of being blown up by covert bombs.While there is a police presence – “they would regularly be up at the church with speed guns” – it’s unlike other areas, he says. Outside Keenan’s Bar, an official Northern Ireland tourist information sign hangs which serves as the “centre point” for Walsh’s walking tours. The great brotherhood the Nation of England has with the Greatest nation, the United States of America.

There’s no way in 1986 you could have foreseen where we are now because it was helicopters, it was the army, it was horrible, people were getting killed. Writers on the Belfast Agreement: Michael Longley, Jan Carson, Michelle Gallen, Neil Hegarty and more reflect on 25 years of change ] Even if you take the history out of it, this area is outstanding in its beauty. But it got little coverage by the tourist board compared to other places. I'm starting to like Joe a little more, but still feel there is something missing that makes me really care about his character. That being said when he was held by Duggen I did want him to survive and for the first time in all the books, I did feel jumpy. So an improvement for me. My team were probably the most vulnerable in that policing world of Northern Ireland, that’s a fact.A lot of my stuff would be around the culture and heritage of this whole area. Places likes Creggan (a village beside Crossmaglen where the ‘lost’ O’Neill clan vault was accidentally discovered in a graveyard in 1973) are unique.” The British army sangar (or “lookout post” as locals called it) that loomed over the small town’s market square for decades was demolished as part of the so-called “normalisation” plan in 2007. The branding of south Armagh as “bandit country” by former Northern Ireland secretary Merlyn Rees in 1974 is a tag that persists; it was reinforced by a photograph Byrne tweeted on Christmas Day three years ago, showing him posing at the station gates beside officers armed with machine guns. The policing is a wee bit more normal than it was but let’s face it, it’s not normal,” McConville adds.