Haughey: His Life and Unlucky Deeds

by Bruce Arnold

320 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Bruce Arnold is an English journalist and author who has lived in Ireland since 1957. His main expertise is in the fields of literary criticism and art criticism.
In 1983 it emerged that his telephone had been bugged by Charles J. Haughey in the Irish phone tapping scandal. He and the other bugged journalists were considered to have "anti-national" views.

Reviews

[Nick Garbutt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I spent a year working as a journalist in Dublin in1989. I was at the Sunday Tribune which was then edited by Vincent Browne, a truly formidable editor with a forensic and restless mind who I learned so much from.
The Taoiseach at the time was Charles J Haughey, the original “man in the mohair suit” who had considerable skills in the darker political arts, enormous, unexplained wealth, undemocratic/dictatorial tendencies and was, apparently irresistibly attractive to women.
Haughey was a genuinely compelling figure and this brief study of his political life is well-written and concise and in its way authoritative. But for me it missed the mark – I would have liked at least some information/speculation about how a former accountant turned full-time politician came to amass such conspicuous wealth and some flavour of his private life.
You’ll find neither here and as these two aspects of the man seem to be critical to understanding him that seems a startling omission.

[Brian Dyer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this hoping to gain some insight into what made Charles Haughey do the things he did. There was no such insight on offer. The whole book is negatively slanted, the author's own experiences of being phone tapped by Haughey's government understandably leading to this perspective. It is also a poorly constructed book which flows oddly, a subject under examination in one paragraph suddenly is ignored in the next only to be revisited two or three pages later as if it were under discussion all along, which for a journalist is a bit strange. The other thing that I found jarring was the author's obvious respect and admiration for pretty much every politician who stood against Haughey at any point in his life, from Lemass to Lynch, from Desmond O'Malley to Garret FitzGerald whilst his own opinion of Charlie wanders from outright contempt to thinly veiled awe at how he managed to survive as long as he did. Ultimately a bit of a disappointment but did shed some light on the events that shaped Haughey's career in politics.

[Crowley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really a brilliant concise overview of Haughey. Unlike other political Irish biographies, i found that this one was really well put together and flowed excellently. This is probably due in part to the authors background of a journalist rather then a historian.
The book is an extremely easy read.

Really a fascinating insight into the premiership of Haughey and his action, and the authors attempt to reason his actions.

Admittedly it can be argued that the author was biased as The Haughey administration had his (and another journalists) phone wiretapped. In spite of this the novel appears to me to be fair and balanced, when taken into account the actions taken by Haughey as Taoiseach and as a Minister.
A once divisive figure, who is now almost universally condemned by his country, this book does not treat him as a villain but as an opportunistic man who, in his own words, “had done the state some service”.

[Robert Geoghegan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into the political life of a politician whose legacy had a profound affect on the people of Ireland.