The book is a detailed account, in diary form, of the thirty-year development of civil and political unrest in Northern Ireland. It also contains a number of short essays which look back at the major events of the last thirty years, assessing their significance and setting them in context. Among these are: Bloody Sunday (1972), the collapse of the power-sharing Executive (1974), the Republican hunger strikes (1981), the Anglo-Irish Agreement (1985), the first IRA ceasefire (1994), and the historic Good Friday Agreement (1998).
This chronology is the essential guide to the politics and tragic events of the last thirty years in Northern Ireland. It includes a comprehensive coverage of the peace process.
A graduate of Pembroke College, Cambridge, Paul Bew has been Professor of Irish Politics at Queen's University, Belfast since 1991. A leading commentator on Northern Irish politics, he is the author of many publications on Irish history and the politics of contemporary Ireland.