Cover image for The bloody red hand : a journey through truth, myth and terror in Northern Ireland / Derek Lundy.
The bloody red hand : a journey through truth, myth and terror in Northern Ireland / Derek Lundy.
TITLE:
The bloody red hand : a journey through truth, myth and terror in Northern Ireland / Derek Lundy.
Publication Date:
2006
Publication Information:
Toronto : A.A. Knopf Canada,
Edition:
1st ed.
Physical Description:
351 p. : maps.
Bibliography Note:
Includes index.
Summary:
The name “Lundy” is synonymous with traitor in Ulster. Derek Lundy’s first ancestral subject was the Protestant governor of Derry in 1688, just before it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. For reasons that remain ambiguous, Robert ordered the gates of the city opened in surrender. Protestant hard-liners staged a coup de ville and drove him away in disgrace, a traitor to the cause. But Robert is more memorable for his peace-seeking moderation than for the treachery the standard history attributes to him. William Steel Dickson’s legacy is a little different: a Presbyterian minister born in the late 18th century, he preached with famous eloquence in favour of using whatever means necessary to resist the tyranny of the English, including joining forces with the Catholics in armed rebellion. Finally, there is “Billy” Lundy, born in 1890, the antithesis of the ecumenical William, and the embodiment of what the Ulster Protestants had become by the beginning of World War I – a tribe united in their hostility to Catholics and to the project of an independent Ireland.
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780676976496