Despite all the media coverage of the Northern peace process, there has been comparatively little in book form. Quidnunc's colleague, Irish Times Foreign Affairs Correspondent Deaglan de Breadun, formerly this paper's Northern Editor, will help to rectify that with The Far Side of Revenge: Making Peace in Northern Ireland, to be published early next month by the Cork-based Collins Press and launched by the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
The title comes from a Seamus Heaney poem, and the book provides a detailed account of the lead-up to the Belfast Agreement and its tortured aftermath, with insights into the thinking and strategy of key players. In researching his 400page volume he has uncovered new information about the circumstances leading to the restoration of the IRA ceasefire in 1997. He also gives the fullest account so far of the all-night drama resulting in the Belfast Agreement, as well as the twists and turns leading to last February's suspension of the institutions by the hapless Peter Mandelson.