The Green Divide: An Illustrated History of the Irish Civil War

by Michael B. Barry

The Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921 proved to be the rock on which the Irish nationalist consensus, formed during the preceding decade, foundered. A split between the pro- and anti-Treaty sides grew and both positions became entrenched. No side wanted a war, but as events unfolded, there was an inexorable descent towards armed strife and the Irish Civil War began. As the conflict expanded, the anti-Treaty IRA retreated to remote areas and fought a guerrilla war. The anti-Treaty side had already lost the struggle by March 1923, when IRA Chief-of-Staff Liam Lynch was shot on a bleak mountainside.
The events of the conflict of 1922-23 are brought alive and explained in a readable and clear style, in this richly illustrated book, with over 400 photographs and images.

192 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Author and historian Michael B. Barry studied in Trinity College, Dublin. He has worked on transportation projects both in Ireland and around the world. With a strong interest in history and heritage, Michael has written several books including 'Victorian Dublin Revealed' and 'The Green Divide, an Illustrated History of the Irish Civil War'. His recent book 'Courage Boys, We are Winning, an Illustrated History of the 1916 Rising' is a best seller. It has been described in the press as the best illustrated book on the 1916 Rising, and has gone into reprint.

Michael is an accomplished photographer and, in the years leading up to 2008, traveled to Spain, Jordan and Morocco to take a large selection of images for 'Homage to al-Andalus, the Rise and Fall of Islamic Spain'. His research also took him to Syria in 2008. His photographs of Syria’s heritage taken then form a valuable archive which enabled him to create the book 'Beyond the Chaos, the Remarkable Heritage of Syria' in 2014.

Reviews

[Mike Walsh · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought a book primarily focused on pictures of the Irish Civil War wouldn't be of that much interest, but it really is quite engaging to put faces to names and to see some of the destruction caused during the Irish Civil War. The book does go through the major facts of the war and tries to tell a story via images and their descriptions, but I definitely feel that it could use more text outside of the intros to chapters and the descriptions of images. The book also does seem biased towards the pro-treaty side, but as the author explains in the book, this is due to the anti-treaty side taking very little images and the pro-treaty side taking the vast majority of images to use for propaganda.