The Journey - A Monumental and Historical Movie.

 Colm Meaney as Martin McGuinness and Timothy Spall as the Reverend Ian Paisley.

The Journey was a very poignant film about a simple car drive from the celebrated St Andrews golf course in Scotland to Edinburgh airport. Here a private plane is waiting to take an important political dignitary back to Belfast for his 50^th wedding anniversary. 

The political figure is the Reverend Ian Paisley. He is the head of a Loyalist (pro-British) political party in Northern Ireland. This part of Ireland has been fighting a vicious civil war for almost forty years. It is 2006 and the British Government along with Ireland’s Taoiseach government are trying to get the warring factions of the north to agree a peace settlement. If so, they could bring peace to the troubled province of Northern Ireland. 

The rural St Andrews golf course is the private venue and the peace talks are deadlocked into a stalemate. Tony Blair and Enda Kenny are exhausted. Sinn Fein leaders, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams also seem lost for a breakthrough on the peace agreement involving power-sharing. There is a desire for the re-opening of Stormont. The sticking point is the loyalist MP – the Reverend Ian Paisley. The man is a rigid and religious disciplinarian who detests the people of Sinn Fein and is very reluctant to engage in power sharing and dialogue with a group he regards as terrorists. 

There is this wake of political bigotry on both sides of the argument. Then in the middle of the talks, the respective Prime Ministers of UK and Ireland have to stop the meeting for the Reverend Ian Paisley. He wants to go home and be with his wife for his 50^th Wedding Anniversary. This is agreed to, but Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuiness pulls a rank of protocol matter and requests he wants to travel in the car and plane with Ian Paisley. Two protagonists on either side of a bitter and murderous conflict. 

The British secret service or some other security outfit see an opportunity for a breakthrough. If Martin McGuinness can reach out to the firebrand loyalist, the political deadlock might be broken. What follows is a car journey that has monumental and historical significance. The chauffeur is bugged with cameras so that the security unit can watch the journey via a spy camera. 

We have Tony Blair, Enda Kenny, Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley Junior all watching this nail-biting and at times bitter discussion between former IRA leader and a pro-British loyalist MP.  A truly marvellous movie. Very gripping in parts. Also very moving too. A total must watch. 

The IRA by Tim Pat Coogan

The IRA by Tim Pat Coogan

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I read this back in 1983 when the conflict was in the news on a daily basis. It was a couple of years after the hunger strikes and when Margaret Thatcher was the UK Prime Minister. I was engrossed by it and found it very compelling to read. Of course, it has been updated since and would probably cover the entire length of the conflict. I would recommend it to anyone who likes to read about recent history.

The Black and Tan Summer: Ireland's Turbulent Year of 1920

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Harry's Game - A Gritty Thriller (set in Northern Ireland during the mid seventies.) by Gerald Seymour

Gritty story set during the mid 1970s in Northern Ireland during the height of the IRA conflict. A high profile British government worker is targeted and killed by the Provisional IRA outside his home in London. The British Government cannot allow such an act to go by without a response - a severe response. In the corridors of power, ministers sanction the intellegence services to formulate a robust and hard hitting response. The British decide to target the very IRA assassin in his own area of believed safety - the Ardoyne area of Republican Belfast. 

A pro-Britsih, Northern Irish army officer, serving in the British army is sent under cover to locate and terminate the IRA assassin. Gradually the under cover oprative weaves his way around the streets of the Ardoyne and begins to blend in with the local population. 

Very pacey thriller that keeps one turning the pages, especially when the local IRA Brigade commander learns that a suspected British agent is within the no go zones of Republican Belfast. Can the Brit be found? Can the Brit home in on his prized kill - the IRA assasin?

Smashing read. Give it a go!