The Echo Of The Thunder

I'm back with a new volume of standalone episodes on the history and politics of Irish republicanism! In this episode I talk to Pádraig Óg Ó Ruairc, author of Burn Them Out! a history of the Irish far right, recently published by Bloomsbury. Padraig has written several non-fiction books on the Irish revolutionary period, including bestselling The Disappeared, which explores all the forced disappea...

In this episode, I speak to Theresa O’Keefe about womens involvement in the Provisional IRA. Her book ‘Feminist Identity Development and Activism in Revolutionary Movements’ has been described as the first in-depth exploration of women in the contemporary Irish republican movement and the relationship between revolutionary republican women and the ‘mainstream’ women’s movement. A groundbreaking wo...

For episode 7 of the podcast I am joined by Siobhra Aiken. Her book Spiritual Wounds: Trauma, Testimony and the Irish Civil War deconstructs the concept of the Civil War as "the unspeakable war". She outlines the ways in which a raft of Civil War veterans set out to depict their experiences. While considered by the chattering classes to be low brow pulp at best or subliterature at worst, they read...

In this episode I’m delighted to welcome John Crawley to the show. John was born in Long Island, New York, in 1957, the son of a Co. Roscommon father and a Co. Kerry mother. Two years later the family moved to Chicago and, in 1972, John moved to the town of Castlerea, Co Roscommon, to live with an aunt. It was During this time he decided to become an active member of the republican movement and re...

I was joined by Séamus Kearney to discuss his recently released memoir "No Greater Love” (https://www.anceathrupoili.com/en/shop/no-greater-love-the-memoirs-of-seamus-kearney/). The book details Séamus' involvement in the republican movement, from his entry into the youth wing of the Provisional IRA in Belfast at just 15 years of age through to his incarceration in 1977, whereupon he joined fellow...

For the fourth episode of the show I welcome Brian Hanley to the podcast. We discuss the '1969/'19 70 split in the Irish republican movement and the subsequent trajectory of the Provisionals and Officials up until 1972: the deadliest year of the Troubles that saw the Officials eventual ceasefire and the Provisionals famously declaring it the “Year of Victory”. Brian is Assistant Professor of Twent...

Episode 2 of The Echo Of The Thunder is out tomorrow morning in celebration of #InternationalWomensDay I spoke to historian, writer and researcher Liz Gillis about the vitally important contributions of women to the republican movement, from Fenianism to the Civil War. Liz is one of the leading historians of womens organisations during the Irish revolutionary period and the author of several books...

For the first episode of The Echo of the Thunder podcast I was delighted to speak with Fearghal Mac Bhloscaidh. Fearghal is a historian of the Irish revolutionary period and author of the consistently blistering BLOSC blog, a home for his writing on history and politics. His explicitly Marxist, anti-imperialist analysis is always worth reading and in this episode we covered the fundamental philoso...