Rebel Hearts

This is a detailed and revealing portrait of the world of the IRA. For ten years Kevin Toolis investigated the lives of the men and women who fought the IRA's war against the British state. Each chapter of the book explores a world where history, faith and human savagery dominates lives and deaths. In "Brothers" a whole family is sucked into Ulster's troubles, killing their enemies and then being killed themselves. "Informers" shows the underside of the intelligence war between the British security forces and the IRA, and the bullet-in-the-head consequences for those IRA volunteers who "turn" and betray their one-time comrades. "Martyrs" shows the transformation of an IRA volunteer, whose attempt to ambush and murder goes wrong, and turns him into a martyr for the cause. This book is a history, a map and a guide to the psychological underworld of the world's most enduring terrorist cause. It explains and uncovers the roots of the conflict in Northern Ireland through a series of connected individual portraits of IRA men, from the leaders to the lowest level of volunteer, killed on his first operation.