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This book review discusses "Getting to Good Friday: literature and the peace process in Northern Ireland" by Marilynn Richtarik. The book explores the interactions between the peace process leading to the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 and literary works that reflect the experiences and emotions of that period. The narrative covers the years from 1980 to 2008 and includes the perspectives of negotiating politicians, writers, and ordinary people in Northern Ireland. The review highlights the impact of literature in understanding and imagining a Northern Irish identity that can unite all residents. [Extracted from the article]

This article discusses a book that explores the concept of forgiveness from various perspectives, including theology, philosophy, literature, and psychoanalysis. The book examines how forgiveness can be achieved in different situations, such as in the aftermath of war or personal conflicts. It also analyzes the role of forgiveness in works of literature, such as King Lear and The Wings of the Dove. The article highlights the strengths and weaknesses of the book, praising its exploration of forgiveness through psychoanalysis and the arts, while critiquing certain chapters for their lack of organization and generalizations. Overall, the article suggests that the book offers valuable insights into the complex nature of forgiveness. [Extracted from the article]

"Thatcher's spy: my life as an MI5 agent inside Sinn Féin" by Willie Carlin is a book that reveals the experiences of a former MI5 agent who infiltrated Sinn Féin during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The book has been met with controversy and skepticism, with some questioning the author's trustworthiness and motives. Carlin's actions have been seen as a betrayal by his community and family, and his claims of influencing MI5 and the peace process have been disputed. Overall, the book offers a perspective on the complex and murky world of espionage during a tumultuous period in Northern Ireland's history. [Extracted from the article]

The book review discusses "Spying in South Asia: Britain, the United States, and India’s Secret Cold War" by Paul McGarr, which delves into the historical context of Western intelligence agencies' actions in the region during the Cold War. The author highlights how these covert activities eroded trust in the West and influenced India's own intelligence operations. McGarr's thorough research draws on archives and published materials to provide a nuanced account of American and British intelligence activities in India, prompting a reassessment of Western covert actions in the region. The review praises the book as a well-written and scholarly analysis that sheds light on a complex and often overlooked aspect of South Asian history. [Extracted from the article]

"The age-old struggle': Irish republicanism from the battle of the Bogside to the Belfast agreement, 1969–1998" by Jack Hepworth explores the ideologies underlying Irish republicanism and the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) during their thirty-year campaign. The PIRA emphasized their role as defenders of the Catholic population of Northern Ireland and their fidelity to Irish tradition. The movement's stance on socialism and feminism evolved over time, and they had a complex relationship with the Catholic Church. The book also examines the shift from a military campaign to politics and negotiation, highlighting the republican leadership's ability to adapt their tactics while maintaining their core belief in British rule as the central problem. Overall, the book provides valuable insights into the development of northern republicanism during a tumultuous period. [Extracted from the article]

In turn, Jennifer Thomson's book I Abortion Law and Political Institutions i focuses on abortion politics, starting from a simple question: "Why hasn't the 1967 Abortion Act been applied to Northern Ireland?" While these books will be greatly useful to feminist academics, they ultimately could be of the most benefit for nonfeminist readers who wish to understand the politics of Northern Ireland. A gendered lens offers us a new way to see the politics of Northern Ireland, but, more importantly, a feminist approach allows us a new way to reenvision how politics could be done to benefit everyone. The politics of Northern Ireland is also visually hypermasculine, most recognizable through conflict imagery or political figures at the Northern Ireland Assembly. [Extracted from the article]

There was some increasingly well-publicised discrimination against Catholics by small Unionist councils west of the river Bann but the Northern Ireland Housing Trust set up near the end of the Second World War was never accused of this. This uncertainty, coupled with IRA attacks which, as after 1970, were conducted with little heed for their cost to innocent Catholics from Loyalist reprisals, left what he describes as 'an indelible impact on Northern Ireland's constitution and cohesion'. Any Dublin government of a thirty-two county state would have to face this dramatic shortfall in funds despite the recent macro-economic performance of the republic being arguably much better than Northern Ireland's. [Extracted from the article]

The Union, declares David Cameron in his memoirs, forms part of his "make-up". Convery has argued that Thatcher's latter-day "dual polity" strategy towards Scotland and Wales reached its limits during Cameron's premiership ([2]). "Traditions that seemed alien to me and to the UK I knew" Emerging from a later generation, David Cameron possessed no such baggage, although he did share some of Mrs Thatcher's incomprehension. Mrs Thatcher's Anglo-centricity has already been noted - her Sermon on the Mound even quoted Cecil Spring-Rice's hymn I I Vow to Thee, my Country i - while Cameron acknowledges "heavy criticism" for raising "English Votes for English Laws" in his post-independence referendum speech. [Extracted from the article]

, London: Pluto Press, 2021; 189 pp.: ISBN 9780745344171, £14.99 As with any book that covers current events in Northern Ireland, recent political convulsions over the Northern Ireland Protocol and the loss of two DUP leaders at the time of writing almost supersede Allen's intervention. Allen proposes that for any attempted reunification of Ireland one must not ignore matters of pre-existing material exploitation in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Allen is very determined to correct lazy assumptions about the origins of the sectarian divide in Northern Ireland as one of simple differences of religion between Irish people. [Extracted from the article]

Breaking peace: Brexit and Northern Ireland: by Feargal Cochrane, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2020, £20.00, pp. vii+288 (Hardback), ISBN: 9781526142559 In Chapter 6, Cochrane turns his attention to the specifics of how Brexit has damaged the B/GFA. Breaking Peace grapples with a fast-moving, constantly contorting, but inescapably pertinent issue; Brexit's impact on the peace process. [Extracted from the article]

In an engaging style, Hoey takes the temperature of the political universe of Irish republicanism, displaying a particularly keen understanding of the ways in which new social media have affected the dissemination and reception of republican ideology. Hoey (p. 29) argues that "30 years of grassroots activism" allowed SF to "install itself as the arbiter of republican self-definition". Shinners, dissos and dissenters: Irish republican media activism since the Good Friday Agreement: by Paddy Hoey, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 2018, 207 + xii pp., £70 (hardback), ISBN 978-1-5261-1424-2, £23. [Extracted from the article]

To explain how theatres sustain these values, McKinnie reads not primarily plays - though he does analyze some performances - but theatrical operations, and particularly the uses and meanings of theatre buildings. This ambiguity about theatre's political economy - and about how theatre shapes our attitudes toward politics and economics - permeates the book. McKinnie is clear-eyed about theatre's inherent embeddedness in the market, and willing to find both success and failure as theatre tries to think beyond contemporary economism. [Extracted from the article]

Besides the Sunningdale and Belfast Agreements - the latter having two separate chapters covering the negotiation and implementation phases - the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985 and the Downing Street Declaration (and Framework Documents) of 1993 are also covered. When it comes to the book's limitations, the authors readily concede that - aside from focusing on interstate negotiation alone (p. 3) - it was not always easy to achieve a balanced two-sided participation in the seminars (p. 23). Negotiating a Settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969-2019: written by John Coakley and Jennifer Todd, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2020. [Extracted from the article]

In early 2009, a series of deadly attacks by republican militants on members of the security services in Northern Ireland shocked observers who had assumed that the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 and the establishment of a power-sharing government in 2007 had finally brought peace and stability to the troubled state. Some dissidents disagreed with Sinn Fein's tactical decisions (e.g., to contest elections or to agree to ceasefires in 1994 and 1997); others opposed the terms of the Good Friday Agreement; and, many mistrusted or disliked Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams. However, Frampton argues that the dissidents all shared a militant republican ideology rooted in Irish history. [Extracted from the article]

When John Major told the House of Commons on November 1, 1993, that it would turn his stomach to talk with the Provisional IRA, he must have felt a certain queasiness even as the words left his lips. John Hume (conducting his own secret talks with Gerry Adams) tried to explain the Sinn Féin position in terms a British parliamentarian could understand. The talks got nowhere.) The IRA, however, also had an interest in sitting down with the British, in essence asking the same questions of them in reverse. [Extracted from the article]

Like much of their previous work, John Coakley and Jennifer Todd's latest is sure to become an important reference text for scholars of peace and conflict in Northern Ireland. I Negotiating a Settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969-2019 i is the most recent collaborative, book-length contribution to the vast literature on the conflict in and about Northern Ireland by two scholars whose contributions to this literature are already many and seminal. Negotiating a settlement in Northern Ireland, 1969-2019: by J. Coakley and J. Todd, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2020, 624 pp., £95.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 9780198841388. [Extracted from the article]

Building on his previous work (Emerson, [1]), Emerson argues that the greater use of preferential voting procedures, such as the Modified Borda Count (MBC), can help unlock a more substantive vision of democracy. However, while Northern Ireland's contemporary political system promotes inclusive power-sharing, for the very purpose of avoiding the pitfalls of majoritarianism, Emerson observes that it still institutionalises majority voting. Majority voting as a catalyst of populism: preferential decision-making for an inclusive democracy: by Peter Emerson, Cham, Switzerland, Springer, 2019, 227 pp., €77.99 (hardback), ISBN 978-3-030-20219-4. [Extracted from the article]

The article reviews the book "Unionists, Loyalists, and Conflict Transformation in Northern Ireland," by Lee A. Smithey.

This article reviews the book "The Long Road to Peace in Northern Ireland," revised 2nd edition, edited by Marianne Elliott.