Maurice Sweeney’s picture, constructed around a lengthy interview between veteran journalist Ed Moloney and the late IRA volunteer Dolours Price, confirms the subject as a fiercely articulate woman with a chilling certainty of purpose. In charting Price’s journey from civil rights activist to convicted bomber to peace process sceptic, it offers an efficient history of the entire conflict. Price was actually on the 1969 People’s Democracy march that notoriously ended at Burntollet Bridge with loyalists attacking while security forces refused to intervene. The story of her childhood nursing an aunt wounded handling explosives – blind and without hands – is chilling enough to demand attention. A sentimental part of the brain wonders what this icily intelligent woman could have achieved in different circumstances.

Source: The Irish Times June 10, 2019 10:01 UTC