Ever since Nicéphore Niépce took a snapshot from a window, overlooking the rooftops of Saône-et-Loire, in the 1820s, we’ve been living, and lost, in the kingdom of the image. With the development of photography, cinema, television, and the internet, the …
Will there be another Stakeknife?
For a spy, a job requiring furtive anonymity, James Bond always did have an unusual side-line in mass homicide. Apart from The Man with the Golden Gun, where Bond dispatches only the eponymous Scaramanga, his body count almost always hits …
Sinn Féin’s hollow Hamas stance
The torment of Thomas Hand, an Irish man originally from Dun Laoghaire in Dublin, speaks directly to the most visceral fear of every parent: that, one day, we may find ourselves powerless to protect our child. Mr Hand lived with …
Are all terrorists monsters?
Like many a supposedly timeless phenomenon, terrorism is a modern invention. As a political idea, it first emerges with the French Revolution, so that terrorism and the modern democratic state are twinned at birth. In the era of Danton and …
Stakeknife’s final escape
Freddie Scappaticci died sometime last week, somewhere in his late 70s, somewhere in England. It is a death that defies obituary.
Obituaries give shape to a death and hold it in context, allowing us to extract explanations and lessons. But …
The betrayal of Ireland’s borderlands
“My cousin owns that pub,” Father Joseph McVeigh says as a yellow building comes into view. “I remember the day it was bombed — just five months before Michael was murdered.”
Michael Leonard, Joseph’s cousin, was shot dead by Royal …
Northern Ireland’s dangerous future
It’s been exactly three years since the 29-year-old journalist Lyra McKee was killed in the Creggan area of Derry, hit by a stray bullet from the dissident “New IRA”. She was reporting from the scene of a riot, an event …