History of the English-speaking peoples since 1900.

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BillK

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I have just finished reading this book and wondered if anyone else had done so.

My view is that the author, Andrew Roberts, is anti-Irish. I don't have too much of a problem with that, but I strongly object to a sentence on page 579. This is part of a section in which he says that Hollywood political correctness has fastened on the Brit, especially the imperialist Brit, as a safe target for sustained abuse and misrepresentation.

He goes on to say:

"In October 1996, Michael Collins was released, a badly skewed biopic of the Irish republican leader. In it a British armoured car is shown firing on an audience in a sports stadium (which never happened),....."

Am I being over sensitive or is not the quote above misrepresentation, given that he does not go on to describe the killing by British forces of the people at Croke Park?

I have emailed Mr Roberts telling him what I think and will pass on ant reply that I get.
I am not holding my breath waiting for it!
 
Actually, it did not happen as shown in the film, which was an IRA propoganda wet dream. The armoured car in question was on Clonliffe road and fired over the heads of people trying to escape the attack at the Canal end of the ground. It is not certain but some of these rounds may have killed people in the ground but, the point is the armoured car never entered the playing field and deliberately targeted people as portrayed in the film.

Havng said that, I do not know if the author of the book you refer to would have known this!
 
No, but the point BillK made was that the author said "which never happened", which it didn't, as the truth was much more graphic, involving soldiers firing at will into the crowd, however, the author didn't go on to tell this. Thus this part of the book was as skewed as the movie?
 
This guy is hilarious. I read The Aachen Memorandum, which is a Tory's dream of how the EU europeanises the UK much against the grain of the 'plucky little nation'. It's really funny - but he didn't intend it to be!

(Having lived there for a long time, a lot of the people I met working thought that Ireland - all of it - belonged to the UK. They couldn't grasp that we had a different currency -IR£ at the time- and didn't have the same shops......And recently I received a letter from a British company offering me business from all over the UK, assuming that I was IN the UK - despite being address to Dublin, Ireland!!!!)
 

I'm not standing up for the author, but I interpreted the OP's statement as saying that the armoured car firing directly into the crowd within Croke Park actually happened, whereas it did not - if he is aware of this (which I doubt)the author seems to latch on to this inaccuracy as proof the whole Bloody Sunday thing never happened.
 

Its like says the titanic never sunk becuase bits of the moive where made up...
 
This is history for Neo cons. It would be funny execpt that it provides the intellectual basis for invading distant countries on the basis of advancing democracy and civilisation.
Small wonder Ireland and the Irish are seen unfavourably. We just didn't appreciate the greatness of the British Empire and all it did for us.
Jacob Weisberg has a piece about it in today's FT.
The Historian Shielding Bush from Reality

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/a5b7ebd2-dd4c-11db-8d42-000b5df10621.html
 
Glenbhoy's post says what I thought I had said - obviously my post wasn't clear enough.
 
BillK said:
Am I being over sensitive or is not the quote above misrepresentation, given that he does not go on to describe the killing by British forces of the people at Croke Park?
Click to expand...

You're not being over-sensitive at all Bill, but at this stage there's been so much re-writing of the history of Bloody Sunday by anti-Nationalist revisionists, most of them Irish, I just smile at it all. They're as deceitful as Neil Jordan!

It's all politics, the very same types have waffled endlessly the last few days about the leap the DUP have had to make to tolerate sitting in the same room as Sinn Fein, as if the DUP and their pals were the innocents in the grim history of NI. I'm assuming these commentators never heard of gerrymandering!

The DUP are no better or no worse than Sinn Fein, both represent the extremes of their communities, and both have nasty cohorts who have inflicted misery on the people of NI. So, in that sense, Sinn Fein's leap has been no less huge. But your Bloody Sunday-denier is unlikely to admit it!
 
BillK said:
"In October 1996, Michael Collins was released, a badly skewed biopic of the Irish republican leader. In it a British armoured car is shown firing on an audience in a sports stadium (which never happened),....."
Click to expand...
Wouldn't argue with any of that myself on artistic and historical grounds.
 
ClubMan said:
Wouldn't argue with any of that myself on artistic and historical grounds.
Click to expand...

And no arguments either about Andrew Roberts leaving it right there.... without informing his readers that a touch of indiscriminate murdering did actually happen that day? Which is the point Bill was making.

Ah yes, you gotta love this revisionism!
 
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