One writer who won't be rushing out to buy Roddy Doyle's new fictional interpretation of events during the early years of this State is Nollaig O Gadhra, lecturer in the Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology.
O Gadhra has no truck with what he regards as yet more revisionism, and prefers to stick to history as he sees it.
In his view the history of the Civil War should not be confined to Dublin or the Munster Republic, given the level of involvement west of the Shannon.
O Gadhra, who has written biographies of Gandhi, John Boyle O'Reilly, Edward Ignatius Rice and Richard J. Daley, as well as several award-winning books in Irish, has just published an account of those turbulent times in the province, based on notes collected in a scrapbook by the late J.J. Waldron of Tuam, Co Galway.
O Gadhra has taken Waldron's records, originally collated for the war's 50th anniversary, and placed them in a national context. He gives much credit to David Burke, editor of the Tuam Herald who referred the project to him and allowed "a mere outsider" (O Gadhra being a Limerick man) "so much space and latitude".
The result is a very detailed insight into the conflict, based on eyewitness accounts and letters, some of this correspondence having been sent to the local newspaper by people who had to leave during the first decade of Irish "freedom".
The author provides a breakdown of IRA command structure in 1922, and his account includes a harrowing description of the standoff during that summer when the British quit their barracks in towns throughout the west and pro- and anti-Treaty forces vied for possession of the buildings. By the autumn, events had taken a barbarous turn when the "official executions" were approved by the Army Council: by the end of that year, 21 men were dead.
He notes that "post-colonial" visitors to Galway are constantly fascinated by the fact that Liam Mellowes, whose memory is honoured in Renmore military barracks (which celebrated its 75th anniversary this year), was shot without trial by "the founding generation" of the new State.
The book is illustrated with photographs from the period, and carries 18 appendices. Already, O Gadhra has received some response, including a request for a copy from the newly-appointed Attorney General, Mr Michael McDowell, he being grandson of Eoin MacNeill.
Civil War in Connacht, 1922-1923 by Nollaig O Gadhra is published by Mercier Press at £9.99, paperback.
