Outsider’s view doesn’t reveal whole picture

CHARLES Townshend’s book, The British Campaign in Ireland, was a classic study of the war from the British perspective. He has also written books on the Easter Rebellion and 20th century Ireland, so his latest book, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence is likely to provoke considerable interest.

It is a balanced account in which the author strives to be fair to all sides, but one senses that he is not as comfortable in examining the story from Irish perspectives as he was in dealing with the British side. Sometimes he repeats the findings of earlier studies that have been superseded by more recent works.