The truce established between the warring IRA and government forces on 9 July 1921 signalled the effective end of what historians now prefer to call the Anglo-Irish War, since the independence won was partial and its stated aims had not yet been achieved. In the two and a half years of the war's duration, a total of 1,300 people had been killed - more than 1,000 of them Irish.

Like all guerrilla wars, the War of Independence was characterised by marvellous courage and miserable cruelty.

It created heroes and spawned two of the most hated forces that an uncaring British government had ever inflicted on the Irish nation: the Black and Tans and the Auxiliaries. And it had its coda in a brothers' struggle that still afflicts the nations psyche.

This book traces the causes, course and consequences of the war. It will help a peaceful generation for which the bloody birth of modern Ireland is ancient history to gain a better understanding of the essence of their nation.

Edward Purdon is the pseudonym of an Irish writer, critic and historian.

MERCIER PRESS (2001)
ISBN - 1 85635 341 9