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Bobby Sands - New Edition: Nothing But an Unfinished Song
This is the best-selling biography of the IRA resistance fighter and hunger-striker, Bobby Sands. In this updated, new edition, Denis O'Hearn draws from a wealth of interviews with friends, comrades, fellow prisoners and prison wardens, to provide a faithful and shocking insight into life in Northern Ireland's H-Block prisons, an exploration of the motivations and thoughts of the Republican strikers and the story of one of the world's most radical, inspirational figures. Following his journey from its very beginnings - an ordinary boy from a working-class background in Belfast to a highly politicised, articulate revolutionary whose death in HM Prison Maze sent reverberations around the world, Bobby Sands: Nothing But An Unfinished Song captures the atmosphere of the time and the vibrancy of the man: a militant anti-imperialist who held on to his humanity despite living through a bitter, ugly struggle.
448 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2005
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September 14, 2011
Why would someone voluntarily decide to starve himself to death? It's a slow, horrible, painful way to die, so one can imagine he would have to feel that he had a very good reason. This book attempts to delve into what, exactly, was going on in Bobby Sands' mind when he decided to go on a hunger strike while imprisoned for his involvement with the IRA. Why he decided to do so even knowing that the English government would certainly not back down, and he would die. What he hoped to accomplish, what he was afraid of, what gave him the conviction to see it through to the end.
That being the case, and given that the subject of this book is, in fact, dead, and the author had to try to piece his motivations together by talking to Sands' friends and family and reading the communications he was able to have smuggled out of the prison and into the hands of his friends on the outside, this book does a pretty good job of what I believe it sets out to do. If I'm honest, it was a hard book to read, because it's really pretty scary, and made even more so by the fact that it's true. The IRA was responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and that's pretty tough to justify. But the British government, and Margaret Thatcher in particular, had a hell of a lot of blood on her own hands. So to look at the question of just what happened in Northern Ireland from different angles is important to understanding how these things could take place, how the situation could escalate to such a level, and could result in such tragic loss of lives.
I don't agree with everything he did, but reading this book, I felt for Bobby Sands. I felt for his family. I could see how someone might feel compelled to take part in this war, and then take every road he took toward trying to demonstrate that his actions and the actions of his friends were not based on common criminality, but on a genuine struggle for the survival of his family, his culture, his community. I looked at the struggle with new eyes. I learned some things. If you're interested in recent Irish history, it's a good read.
That being the case, and given that the subject of this book is, in fact, dead, and the author had to try to piece his motivations together by talking to Sands' friends and family and reading the communications he was able to have smuggled out of the prison and into the hands of his friends on the outside, this book does a pretty good job of what I believe it sets out to do. If I'm honest, it was a hard book to read, because it's really pretty scary, and made even more so by the fact that it's true. The IRA was responsible for the deaths of innocent people, and that's pretty tough to justify. But the British government, and Margaret Thatcher in particular, had a hell of a lot of blood on her own hands. So to look at the question of just what happened in Northern Ireland from different angles is important to understanding how these things could take place, how the situation could escalate to such a level, and could result in such tragic loss of lives.
I don't agree with everything he did, but reading this book, I felt for Bobby Sands. I felt for his family. I could see how someone might feel compelled to take part in this war, and then take every road he took toward trying to demonstrate that his actions and the actions of his friends were not based on common criminality, but on a genuine struggle for the survival of his family, his culture, his community. I looked at the struggle with new eyes. I learned some things. If you're interested in recent Irish history, it's a good read.
March 21, 2011
I have read a lot of books on the Irish conflict, the blanketmen, and the hunger strikers -- which goes without saying that I have also read many books by and/or about Bobby Sands.
This book is full of eyewitness commentary from those who shared their lives first-hand with Bobby Sands as well as an in-depth look into the experiences that shaped him -- both before and during his time in prison.
All I can say is that this book is truly awe-inspiring. It left me with a profound sense of amazement at the courage and spirit of those interned and, even more so, of those, like Bobby, facing impending death. Their unwavering love of their country and its people as well as their desire to be seen as political prisoners rather than criminals lead them to make a huge self-sacrifice so that they may call attention to their cause in the hopes that others would be treated with respect and humanity.
This is such a powerful book and the sufferings of those involved are so overwhelming that I cannot imagine coming up with the proper words for a review (nor would I be so bold as to believe I could). In my opinion, mere words cannot properly capture the enormity of the emotion and power of this book. Read it and I think you'll agree.
This book is full of eyewitness commentary from those who shared their lives first-hand with Bobby Sands as well as an in-depth look into the experiences that shaped him -- both before and during his time in prison.
All I can say is that this book is truly awe-inspiring. It left me with a profound sense of amazement at the courage and spirit of those interned and, even more so, of those, like Bobby, facing impending death. Their unwavering love of their country and its people as well as their desire to be seen as political prisoners rather than criminals lead them to make a huge self-sacrifice so that they may call attention to their cause in the hopes that others would be treated with respect and humanity.
This is such a powerful book and the sufferings of those involved are so overwhelming that I cannot imagine coming up with the proper words for a review (nor would I be so bold as to believe I could). In my opinion, mere words cannot properly capture the enormity of the emotion and power of this book. Read it and I think you'll agree.
November 5, 2025
“The Comintern warns the working-class of Ireland against these betrayals of the ideals of Connolly and Larkin, and points out to the Irish workers and peasants that the only road out of this Free State terrorism and imperialist oppression lies through an organized and coordinated struggle in the political and industrial as well as the military field. The struggle with arms alone, if not supplemented and reinforced by political and industrial action, will inevitably fail….” —From a resolution of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 12/05/1922, during the Irish Civil War.
“Let tyrants tremble before men capable of dying for their ideals after 60 days of hunger strike!
“What were Christ's three days on Calvary, an age-old symbol of human sacrifice, compared to that example?” —Fidel Castro, 9/15/1981
“The young relate the word to the dead. They are moved by and inspired by example. That is what they demand heroes; nobody can talk them out of it.” —James Patrick Cannon, 01/21/1945, American communist in prison for opposing the role of US imperialism in World War II.
"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” —Bobby Sands
This is an exciting book about the life and death of Bobby Sands. While the definitive book on the 1981 hunger strike remains David Beresford’s '' this book contains some new material, and it has a specific focus both on Bobby Sands and on the radicalization that was taking place within the Irish Republican Movement.
To understand this book, it helps to have an idea of what the world was like at the time. Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Many young people today can’t imagine it.
The colonial revolution had been on the march since before World War II, and it had a big impact on the rise of the civil rights movement and Black nationalist sentiment in the US. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association modeled itself after the civil rights movement in the US. A 21-year old socialist activist from this movement, Bernadette Devlin (later McAliskey), was elected to British parliament in 1969 (see The Price of my Soul. She was later the public relations officer for the National H-Block/Armagh Committee supporting the hunger strikers.
In 1975, the US had to pull its last troops out of Vietnam and admit defeat. A mass antiwar movement in the US and around the world had contributed to the Vietnamese victory.
In 1974 the aging fascist dictatorship in Portugal was overthrown, unleashing a workers’ upsurge in that country, as well as an opportunity for Portugal’s African colonies to step up the fight for their freedom. Cuban troops were in formerly Portuguese Angola starting in 1975 to fight South African military intervention on behalf of reactionary elements, and to support the liberation movements in other African countries, like Namibia. The Soweto uprising in 1976 was influenced by this, and a new rise of struggle had opened in South Africa.
In 1979, there were workers and farmers governments, the first stage of socialist revolutions formed in Nicaragua and Grenada. One of US imperialism’s best allies, the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and contrary to what the media says, there’s no such thing as an “Islamic revolution.” This started as a working-class revolution, with general strikes and mass mobilizations. The Islamic clergy had to struggle to keep it within the limits they wanted.
What became the Official IRA, heavily influenced by Stalinism, was giving up the struggle for a united Ireland. The Provisional IRA was formed in response, but initially had a rather conservative/apolitical leadership. This is the point at which the story unfolds.
Northern Ireland was simply the largest piece of territory that Britain could hold on to due to the fact of having a majority of the population that supported British rule--which largely corresponds with Protestants. Even then, partition led to anti-Catholic pogroms to further whittle down the opposition to British rule. There had previously been internment without trial, and during that the nationalist prisoners had been given "special status." The five demands the prisoners raise corresponded to that, since internment had been replaced by special courts with one judge and no jury, and special rules of evidence, but then they called those who were convicted in the special courts "common criminals." Republicans refused to accept this situation.
O'Hearn’s confused politics make it hard to see what the Republican was and wasn't. The prisoners were reading whatever they could get their hands on, and were becoming more clearly anti-imperialist, but Sinn Fein was a revolutionary nationalist group, not a Marxist political party. O'Hearn writes of Bobby Sands’ book One Day In My Life: “If it never achieved the international status of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich it is less because it has inferior literary value… than because it serves the opposite side in the then-raging cold war.”
To me this shows an incredible lack of political misunderstanding, as well as a lack of literary sense. While Bobby Sands was becoming a talented writer, he wasn’t a Solzhenitsyn. The author was influenced by the Stalinist actor Malachy McCourt, not nearly as sharp as his brother Frank.
Sinn Fein called itself socialist, but in and of itself, that doesn’t mean much. Some of the people the prisoners read were Marxists, like Che Guevara, his Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 a favorite, is a great book, but there was another side of the Cuban Revolution besides the guerilla campaign--there was the urban underground, described so well by Cuban leader Armando Hart in his book Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58: A Participant's Account. And Che Guevara was also the author of significant Marxist works on economics and politics (see Che Guevara on Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism. To speak of Che Guevara and the Baader-Meinhof Group as in any way comparable is absurd. Baader-Meinhof was a terrorist group financed by the East German Stalinists for the sole purpose of making trouble for West Germany. It had nothing to do with leading the working class to political power. The prisoners may well have been reading both, but the author doesn’t see the contradiction.
James Connolly was the founder of Irish Marxism, and well worth reading, although most of the books available don’t include his two most important writings: ‘Labour in Irish History and ‘The Reconquest of Ireland, which are available separately. Liam Mellows, Bobby Sands’ favorite, was probably the most important Irish socialist republican after Connolly. I’ve read a biography of him, but none of his writings.
The height of political clarity in Sinn Fein was represented by Gerry Adams’ 1986 The Politics of Irish Freedom, which after a few years was never mentioned again. I was all for the negotiations, since the IRA could never defeat the British Army, but while Sinn Fein had been moving to the left, they now more and more became just interested in winning elections. For a short Marxist view on how revolutionaries participate in bourgeois elections, read Lenin as Election Campaign Manager.
Bobby Sands didn’t die in vain—the British were forced to realize that a military solution was not going to work and subsequently were forced to seriously negotiate. Sectarian tensions in the North have been significantly reduced, which I’m all for, and which may provide a future for working class solidarity, but Sinn Fein today has become a left-liberal bourgeois political party, still with a somewhat nationalist slant, but mostly just trying to win elections North and South. The end of British participation in the EU may well lead to a united Ireland, which would be a step forward.
The struggle in Ireland had a big cultural as well as political impact internationally, with more books and movies about Ireland being produced, more people listening to Irish music and Irish musicians, and of course more people speaking Irish and having a better sense of who they were and what Britain had done to their country. The British Embassy in Tehran is still on Bobby Sands Street. Evry time I watch something on BBC, I'm amazed at the number of actors and others with Irish names. A few generations ago there were few.
Besides the books I’ve mentioned, there are some others worth looking at in relation to this book. Marx and Engels wrote an enormous amount on Irish history and politics, collected in Ireland and the Irish Question. For Lenin’s writings on struggles against colonialism and national oppression, read National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism, includes Lenin’s defense of the Easter Uprising. Trotsky’s essays in Marxism and Terrorism are essential. For how Marxists conduct themselves in court, let me recommend James P. Cannon’s Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial, and for how they conduct themselves in prison, It's the poor who face the savagery of the US justice system, by the Cuban Five. And for a Marxist look at politics in Britain, see Trotsky’s ‘Where is Britain Going? formerly published asLeon Trotsky on Britain by Leon Trotsky (1-May-1998) Paperback.
As a communist in the US, I was involved in Irish solidarity work on and off for around 15 years.
“Let tyrants tremble before men capable of dying for their ideals after 60 days of hunger strike!
“What were Christ's three days on Calvary, an age-old symbol of human sacrifice, compared to that example?” —Fidel Castro, 9/15/1981
“The young relate the word to the dead. They are moved by and inspired by example. That is what they demand heroes; nobody can talk them out of it.” —James Patrick Cannon, 01/21/1945, American communist in prison for opposing the role of US imperialism in World War II.
"Our revenge will be the laughter of our children” —Bobby Sands
This is an exciting book about the life and death of Bobby Sands. While the definitive book on the 1981 hunger strike remains David Beresford’s '' this book contains some new material, and it has a specific focus both on Bobby Sands and on the radicalization that was taking place within the Irish Republican Movement.
To understand this book, it helps to have an idea of what the world was like at the time. Ten Men Dead: The Story of the 1981 Irish Hunger Strike. Many young people today can’t imagine it.
The colonial revolution had been on the march since before World War II, and it had a big impact on the rise of the civil rights movement and Black nationalist sentiment in the US. The Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association modeled itself after the civil rights movement in the US. A 21-year old socialist activist from this movement, Bernadette Devlin (later McAliskey), was elected to British parliament in 1969 (see The Price of my Soul. She was later the public relations officer for the National H-Block/Armagh Committee supporting the hunger strikers.
In 1975, the US had to pull its last troops out of Vietnam and admit defeat. A mass antiwar movement in the US and around the world had contributed to the Vietnamese victory.
In 1974 the aging fascist dictatorship in Portugal was overthrown, unleashing a workers’ upsurge in that country, as well as an opportunity for Portugal’s African colonies to step up the fight for their freedom. Cuban troops were in formerly Portuguese Angola starting in 1975 to fight South African military intervention on behalf of reactionary elements, and to support the liberation movements in other African countries, like Namibia. The Soweto uprising in 1976 was influenced by this, and a new rise of struggle had opened in South Africa.
In 1979, there were workers and farmers governments, the first stage of socialist revolutions formed in Nicaragua and Grenada. One of US imperialism’s best allies, the Shah of Iran was overthrown, and contrary to what the media says, there’s no such thing as an “Islamic revolution.” This started as a working-class revolution, with general strikes and mass mobilizations. The Islamic clergy had to struggle to keep it within the limits they wanted.
What became the Official IRA, heavily influenced by Stalinism, was giving up the struggle for a united Ireland. The Provisional IRA was formed in response, but initially had a rather conservative/apolitical leadership. This is the point at which the story unfolds.
Northern Ireland was simply the largest piece of territory that Britain could hold on to due to the fact of having a majority of the population that supported British rule--which largely corresponds with Protestants. Even then, partition led to anti-Catholic pogroms to further whittle down the opposition to British rule. There had previously been internment without trial, and during that the nationalist prisoners had been given "special status." The five demands the prisoners raise corresponded to that, since internment had been replaced by special courts with one judge and no jury, and special rules of evidence, but then they called those who were convicted in the special courts "common criminals." Republicans refused to accept this situation.
O'Hearn’s confused politics make it hard to see what the Republican was and wasn't. The prisoners were reading whatever they could get their hands on, and were becoming more clearly anti-imperialist, but Sinn Fein was a revolutionary nationalist group, not a Marxist political party. O'Hearn writes of Bobby Sands’ book One Day In My Life: “If it never achieved the international status of One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich it is less because it has inferior literary value… than because it serves the opposite side in the then-raging cold war.”
To me this shows an incredible lack of political misunderstanding, as well as a lack of literary sense. While Bobby Sands was becoming a talented writer, he wasn’t a Solzhenitsyn. The author was influenced by the Stalinist actor Malachy McCourt, not nearly as sharp as his brother Frank.
Sinn Fein called itself socialist, but in and of itself, that doesn’t mean much. Some of the people the prisoners read were Marxists, like Che Guevara, his Episodes of the Cuban Revolutionary War, 1956-58 a favorite, is a great book, but there was another side of the Cuban Revolution besides the guerilla campaign--there was the urban underground, described so well by Cuban leader Armando Hart in his book Aldabonazo: Inside the Cuban Revolutionary Underground, 1952-58: A Participant's Account. And Che Guevara was also the author of significant Marxist works on economics and politics (see Che Guevara on Economics and Politics in the Transition to Socialism. To speak of Che Guevara and the Baader-Meinhof Group as in any way comparable is absurd. Baader-Meinhof was a terrorist group financed by the East German Stalinists for the sole purpose of making trouble for West Germany. It had nothing to do with leading the working class to political power. The prisoners may well have been reading both, but the author doesn’t see the contradiction.
James Connolly was the founder of Irish Marxism, and well worth reading, although most of the books available don’t include his two most important writings: ‘Labour in Irish History and ‘The Reconquest of Ireland, which are available separately. Liam Mellows, Bobby Sands’ favorite, was probably the most important Irish socialist republican after Connolly. I’ve read a biography of him, but none of his writings.
The height of political clarity in Sinn Fein was represented by Gerry Adams’ 1986 The Politics of Irish Freedom, which after a few years was never mentioned again. I was all for the negotiations, since the IRA could never defeat the British Army, but while Sinn Fein had been moving to the left, they now more and more became just interested in winning elections. For a short Marxist view on how revolutionaries participate in bourgeois elections, read Lenin as Election Campaign Manager.
Bobby Sands didn’t die in vain—the British were forced to realize that a military solution was not going to work and subsequently were forced to seriously negotiate. Sectarian tensions in the North have been significantly reduced, which I’m all for, and which may provide a future for working class solidarity, but Sinn Fein today has become a left-liberal bourgeois political party, still with a somewhat nationalist slant, but mostly just trying to win elections North and South. The end of British participation in the EU may well lead to a united Ireland, which would be a step forward.
The struggle in Ireland had a big cultural as well as political impact internationally, with more books and movies about Ireland being produced, more people listening to Irish music and Irish musicians, and of course more people speaking Irish and having a better sense of who they were and what Britain had done to their country. The British Embassy in Tehran is still on Bobby Sands Street. Evry time I watch something on BBC, I'm amazed at the number of actors and others with Irish names. A few generations ago there were few.
Besides the books I’ve mentioned, there are some others worth looking at in relation to this book. Marx and Engels wrote an enormous amount on Irish history and politics, collected in Ireland and the Irish Question. For Lenin’s writings on struggles against colonialism and national oppression, read National Liberation, Socialism and Imperialism, includes Lenin’s defense of the Easter Uprising. Trotsky’s essays in Marxism and Terrorism are essential. For how Marxists conduct themselves in court, let me recommend James P. Cannon’s Socialism on Trial: Testimony at Minneapolis Sedition Trial, and for how they conduct themselves in prison, It's the poor who face the savagery of the US justice system, by the Cuban Five. And for a Marxist look at politics in Britain, see Trotsky’s ‘Where is Britain Going? formerly published asLeon Trotsky on Britain by Leon Trotsky (1-May-1998) Paperback.
As a communist in the US, I was involved in Irish solidarity work on and off for around 15 years.
October 29, 2022
Libro davvero interessante per capire il periodo dei Troubles. I curatori hanno preso parti del diario di Bobby Sands, attivista politico repubblicano e membro dell'IRA che nel 1981 decise di iniziare uno sciopero della fame (insieme ad altri prigionieri) per protesta verso le condizioni dei prigionieri politici nel carcere di Long Kesh. Il libro racconta gli orrori del conflitto, degli abusi dell'esercito inglese e del settarismo verso le famiglie cattoliche e il perché tanti giovani avessero aderito a gruppi di rivolta. Ci sono molte foto dell'epoca e anche attuali. Molto molto bello e struggente ❤️🇮🇪
August 27, 2022
Wow. The life and murder of Bobby Sands and those of his comrades spelled out in a compelling narrative fashion. O’Hearn really can write. Incredibly powerful.
I think O’Hearn’s focus on the internationalist element of republicanism is really something worth sitting with.
I think O’Hearn’s focus on the internationalist element of republicanism is really something worth sitting with.
April 9, 2015
Çok çok güzel bir kitap. Bobby Sands'ı ve İrlanda mücadelesini böyle yakından tanıyabildiğime çok memnun oldum. Yazarın üslubu, hapishanedeki ortamı canlandırması, bir roman gibi Sands'in hikayesini anlatışı etkileyici. Ödenen bedeller önünde saygı duymamak, kendi hayatını gözden geçirmemek mümkün değil. Yapabilir miyiz gerçekten, onurlu bir yaşam, daha iyi bir dünya için bedenlerimizi onlar gibi siper edebilir miyiz?
"Bizim de günümüz gelecek!"
"Bizim de günümüz gelecek!"
September 27, 2017
This book provides an insight into the life of Óglach Bobby Sands, the 1st IRA Hunger Striker to die in the fight for Political Status in 1981. The Republican Prisoners found themselves battered and bruised, tortured and tormented by sadistic warders and a British Government Policy to cast them as common criminals. Bobby Sands and his comrades, both on the Strike and those who were on the previous protests made sure that the world knew they weren't criminals but Political Prisoners. This book is an essential read to understand why Bobby and his comrades took the course of action they did.
February 12, 2021
Kuzey İrlanda’ya dair okuduğum ilk kitap olmasına karşın yazarın romansı üslubu sayesinde tarihsellikte boğulmadım. Bobby’nin hapishaneye teorik bilinci düşük bir eylemci olarak girip siyasi önder olarak hayatının sonlanışı, onu ve arkadaşlarını açlık grevine götüren süreç, inancın bir insanı ne kadar dirayetli kılabileceği, bunların her biri kitabın sonunda insanı uzunca düşündürüyor. Özellikle Türkiye gibi etnik çatışmaların görüldüğü ülkelerden okuyucularda empati duygusu uyandıracağına eminim.
January 23, 2025
I ordered this after finishing "Say Nothing" for the second time and watching the great movie based on it. This is a touching yet infuriating read about the Irish Hunger Strikers, and particularly about the extraordinary Bobby Sands. With little formal education he became an incredible writer, singer and poet while enduring brutal treatment from the British government while incarcerated in Belfast, eventually dying for the cause. Highly recommended.
March 14, 2019
A well written biography of Bobby Sands. I especially appreciated the focus on his early life, which I didn’t get from any of the other books I’ve read.
July 13, 2023
I have always thought Bobby Sands to be a remarkable individual. He seemed to be a similar person to Che Guevara and I have always believed that all of Ireland should be free.
February 11, 2023
History was very interesting. Author clearly interviewed people who knew Bobby. Writing was okay and book had many typos and errors and could’ve used a solid edit to polish it.
April 22, 2016
I remember the day Bobby Sands died. It was all over the Ottawa Citizen and I read everything I could on it. I had heard nothing about the blanketmen or the hunger strike, which is hardly surprising since I was living in Ottawa, Canada, a world away from this ugliness. I remember thinking at the time that no cause was worth this. Then I grew up and realized that yes, there are causes worth dying for.
This book was so interesting as it delved into what happened to make Bobby Sands the man he became. Yes, the IRA did a lot of terrible things but considering that many things being done to the Catholics at the time were reminiscent of what Jews went through in Germany or blacks in South Africa it becomes more understandable.
The more I read of this book, the more respect I got for the man and what he did. To start this hunger strike, knowing that the English would do nothing to stop it and you would died was extremely brave. To do it, not for yourself but to bring the world's eyes on what was happening in Ulster at the time is something I admire. A part of me wonders if everything that finally came about to stop the violence would have happened had it not been for the men who died in maze Prison.
This book was so interesting as it delved into what happened to make Bobby Sands the man he became. Yes, the IRA did a lot of terrible things but considering that many things being done to the Catholics at the time were reminiscent of what Jews went through in Germany or blacks in South Africa it becomes more understandable.
The more I read of this book, the more respect I got for the man and what he did. To start this hunger strike, knowing that the English would do nothing to stop it and you would died was extremely brave. To do it, not for yourself but to bring the world's eyes on what was happening in Ulster at the time is something I admire. A part of me wonders if everything that finally came about to stop the violence would have happened had it not been for the men who died in maze Prison.
September 9, 2016
This is a very interesting study into the short life of Bobby Sands, There is plenty of information here that is not available elsewhere and gives, probably, the most insight into exactly what sort of man he was. He was a different character to what most people expected. The details of his youth and I.R.A activity are well documented, but the book comes into it's own when telling the life inside prison and the H-blocks. It is well written and well told and does give you a real idea of the incredible conditions these men went through in order to achieve their aim. I am not Irish and have no Irish connection, I read this book purely out of interest as to why an individual would choose to starve themselves to death. It certainly does that, but be aware that the author is not objective in his writing. This is very much a pro republican book, and sometimes I found the rather gushing praise detracting. If you have an interest in this part of Irish history then this book is well worth reading. If you are interested in a more objective story of the 1981 hunger strike then I would recommend David Beresford's excellent book 10 Men Dead.
March 19, 2023
like- I was intrigued to learn Bobby Sands' lifestyles, personal conflicts and political influences.
The prison battle sequence of his first sentence was such a hopeful moment for he and his comrades.
I believe that the UN intervention was unknown to many--I think that Bobby should have accepted leadership without Gerry Adams when they arrived, but he might have been nearly unconscious (not clear).
I did not like presenting Sands as talking to the reader like he would be talking to someone else in prison. I believe he would talk to women, children, mothers, etc. differently. He came across as crass. I didn't want to finish it and it triggered me a lot.
His writing and a more traditional historical writing style would have been better for me.
The prison battle sequence of his first sentence was such a hopeful moment for he and his comrades.
I believe that the UN intervention was unknown to many--I think that Bobby should have accepted leadership without Gerry Adams when they arrived, but he might have been nearly unconscious (not clear).
I did not like presenting Sands as talking to the reader like he would be talking to someone else in prison. I believe he would talk to women, children, mothers, etc. differently. He came across as crass. I didn't want to finish it and it triggered me a lot.
His writing and a more traditional historical writing style would have been better for me.
June 29, 2008
I don't know enough about the history of the Irish hunger strikers to compare this book to others. By itself it seems meticulously researched, sympathetic, critical and constructive. Also inspiring.
January 4, 2013
A good bio on Sands and a few events that shaped him for his struggle. I would have liked to read a bit more about events that shaped the overall movement of the IRA on a wider scale, just to give an unfamiliar reader a sense of where Sands' story lies in the Republican struggle as a whole.
December 28, 2014
Is it not possible to support Republicanism without surgically removing one's sense of balance or nuance? Lacking any significant contextualization of the broader Republican cause or the plight of Protestants in Ulster, this book is mystifyingly oblivious to its one-sidededness
March 10, 2009
So excited - a new book to feed my Irish Obsession! Not a whole lot I haven't read but some great photos.
April 8, 2012
No matter what side of this Political war you hold, Bobby Sands as a man was amazing. Only reading this can explain all that my statement entails.
October 30, 2020
Inspiring
Fantastic insight into the life's and minds of these brave men who fought the British system with great valour and dignity
Fantastic insight into the life's and minds of these brave men who fought the British system with great valour and dignity
May 1, 2017
The best book on the subject since ten men dead- highlights Bobby's suffering even more. Great book
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews