Say Nothing: A True Story of Murder and Memory in Northern Ireland

by Patrick Radden Keefe

Cunard Lines had recently launched the Queen Elizabeth II, a luxury cruise liner that would crisscross the Atlantic, transporting well-heeled passengers between Southampton and New York. A thousand crew members worked on the ship, many of them Irish. Some of them also happened to work for Brendan Hughes. In this manner, Hughes used a ship named after the British queen to smuggle weapons to the IRA. When the guns arrived, fresh graffiti on the walls of West Belfast heralded a game change: GOD MADE THE CATHOLICS, BUT THE ARMALITE MADE THEM EQUAL.

The tabloid drew a direct line from the Price sisters to Leila Khaled, the Palestinian hijacker, and diagnosed the violence of these women as a dangerous by-product of feminism – ‘a lethal liberation’.

After all, it was one of the great achievements of Irish civilisation to take the English language and adapt it, creating a different music.

Real.