Death of a Hero: Captain Robert Nairac, GC by John Parker Metro 272pp, £17.99 in UK
South Armagh is not a place that invaders or planters have ever found hospitable, or conquerable. Even when most of Ulster was subdued in the Plantation, south Armagh threw up bands of "tories" (from the Gaelic for raider) including the "incomparable and indefatigable" Redmond O'Hanlon, who conducted brigandage from his fastness north into County Down and as far west as Leitrim, until he was betrayed and hanged in 1681. The Normans built strong castles in Co Louth to counter the predations of the Ulster hordes.
In the past thirty years south Armagh has held on to its reputation for rebellion and appalling violence - the Omagh bomb came from there. Its northern quarter encompassed much of what was termed the "Murder Triangle" - the same area known in the 19th century as the "Linen Triangle" because of the concentration of flax-growing and spinning - which saw the worst acts of sectarian violence of the last thirty years.
At the height of this horror in the mid-1970s a young, brave but apparently quite unbalanced young Guards officer met his fate on May 14th, 1977, and in the process became one of the most remembered figures of the "Troubles".
Robert Nairac is the best known of the North's "disappeared", those who were killed - in the main by the Provisional IRA - and whose remains were secretly disposed of (in Captain Nairac's case, it is feared the south Armagh IRA tossed his body into a carcase rendering machine at a Co Louth meat processing plant).
He has figured prominently in much of the conspiracy books and journalism about clandestine activities of the North's security forces which have earned the term, in many cases deservingly, the "dirty war".
Death of a Hero should dispel a great deal of the speculation about Nairac's alleged involvement in state-sponsored murder. He was, in fact, something of a Hibernophile from his time at England's top Catholic school, Ampleforth, during holdiays from which he often joined his friends, the sons of Lord Killanin, in their Connemara holiday home. All Nairac's friends and former colleagues, interviewed at length by Parker, speak of his fascination with Ireland and Irish culture. His boyhood days on holiday in Spiddal, filled with fishing, hunting and falconry, were part of a young life which the more camp recorders of English military life might term "golden".
Nairac excelled in sports at Ampleforth and later at Oxford, where he kept a falcon in his rooms and was apparently "adored" by his sporting contemporaries. After Oxford he went straight to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and then straight to the Grenadier Guards.
With his background he should have risen to become a leading officer of the Line, but Ulster beckoned. His first tour of duty was in Ardoyne in 1973, where he threw himself enthusiastically into his duties in military intelligence. When the rest of his troops left he stayed on to act as liaison officer when the next regiment arrived, and this act of dedication, it seems, sealed his fate. He was consumed by his work, and as one of the few British officers with any obvious feel for or interest in Irish affairs, he more or less continued in this role, almost permanently seconded from his own regiment, acting as guide or "liaison officer" for a succession of outfits until he eventually landed up with the SAS in south Armagh in 1975.
He was not a member of the SAS, and the men of that regiment interviewed by Parker make it clear that Nairac was resented, and regarded as eccentric and potentially a danger to himself and others. More senior officers say, in hindsight, that it was clear Nairac was obsessed by his work and always pushing himself into dangerous situations. Those who had the power to do so later regretted not pulling him out.
Despite his upper-class English origins, he seems to have been able to pass himself off in pubs, firstly in Irish districts of London and later in south Armagh, drinking pints and singing rebel songs. In London pubs he regularly ended his nights in punch-ups, but would return and be invariably accepted back.
On the night he died he drank pints and sang from the stage in a south Armagh pub. It appears he got into a row with a bunch of local low-level IRA figures, some barely out of their teens. On previous occasions Nairac would have easily fought his way out of trouble, but it was his misfortune on that night that one of his assailants was a much better boxer and the others strong country youths. In the melee they discovered his Browning service pistol, and his cover was blown. He was subdued only after hours of beating and valiant attempts to escape. A more senior Provo was called, and dispatched him with a shot to the head.
Parker's account of Robert Nairac's tragic life is a tribute to a very brave but badly led young soldier. The book leans heavily on accounts from fellow officers and friends, as the author's attempts to speak to people in south Armagh who have knowledge of Nairac's fate were rebuffed. He is scathing about the dubious military tactics of the time and sympathetic to the young men in the pub who were drawn into his death and spent years in prison, while more culpable figures escaped.