This is a detailed history and analysis of the IRA from the dramatic events of the Easter Rising in 1916 to the Peace Process. In it he examines the guerrilla war of 1919–21, the partioning of Ireland in the 1920s and the Irish Civil War of 1922–23. Here, too, are the IRA campaigns in Northern Ireland and Britain during the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and 1960s.

Richard English explains how the Provisionals were born out of the turbulence generated by the 1960s civil rights movement. And he exmaines the escalating violence; the split in the IRA that produced the Provisionals; the introduction of internment in 1971 and the tragedy of Bloody Sunday in 1972. He then details the prison war over political status, culminating in the Hunger Strikes of the early 1980s, moves on to describe the Provisionals’ subsequent emergence as a more committedly political force and concludes with the peace process.