The Rory McIlroy generation, the Kneecap generation, and the fickle nature of national identity in Northern Ireland History shows the folly of pinning constitutional hopes on fluctuating trends

From the Rory McIlroy generation to the Kneecap generation: On why it's a mistake to assume that because young people today think something that inevitably young people will think that in 10 or 20 years’ time. History isn't a straight line.

Stormont is funding CIA-linked firm whose secretive and powerful tech is being used by Trump’s trigger-happy ICE Former employee said they started questioning ‘if we should have built what we built’ as SF minister orders officials to examine what’s going on

In January, Donald Trump's ICE killed in cold blood Reneé Good & Alex Pretti...and then smeared these innocent civilians as "domestic terrorists". Incredibly, hapless and supposedly cash-strapped Stormont is now funding one of ICE's powerful tools.

Stormont is subsidising CIA-linked firm whose secretive and powerful tech is being used by Trump’s trigger-happy ICE Former employee said they started questioning ‘if we should have built what we built’ as SF minister orders officials to examine what’s going on

The NI Executive says it has no money for lots of important things - yet is funding a company with close links to the CIA whose powerful and secretive spy tool is being used by Donald Trump’s trigger-happy ICE agency... after Stormont helped create it.

Tickets to the event here:
www.ticketsource.com/festival-of-...

If you're in London on 15 May, I'll be in conversation with the superb @markhennessy.bsky.social and Simon Kingston, discussing the arguments for and against a united Ireland. We're in Kings College London's Maughan Library as part of the Fleet Street Quarter Festival of Words at 1.30pm.

Irish News wrong to allege 'serious editorial misconduct' on Stephen Nolan show, says IPSO BBC Northern Ireland wins complaint against Irish News over articles alleging staff were "planted" in the audience of Stephen Nolan's show.

BBC Northern Ireland has won a complaint against the Irish News over four articles that alleged staff had been “planted” in the audience of presenter Stephen Nolan’s TV show

IPSO found the Irish News had “overstated” the nature of audience manipulation allegations pressgazette.co.uk/the-wire/new...

MI6 and Army disagreed on hard IRA crackdown, as generals delivered ultimatum on releasing top Provos, files show MoD warned continued “heavy military casualties without any very obvious offsetting operational or political dividend”, would mean falling Army recruitment and morale

As the Troubles escalated to their zenith in 1972, MI6 and the Army’s top brass disagreed on how to defeat the IRA, with the military wanting firmer measures which the intelligence agency feared would be counter-productive, previously secret files show.

Secret MoD file reveals plan to rebrand what Supreme Court says is torture as ‘security measures’ on IRA suspects Top officials debated how they could present to an investigation techniques they knew were deeply controversial

Senior military commanders and civil servants secretly agreed to claim that five extreme interrogation techniques — which if they happened today would legally be defined as torture — “were essentially security measures”, declassified documents reveal.

Secret files reveal Government fears that US extradition of key IRA suspects could ‘upset the rhythm’ of peace Documents prove criminal justice processes weren’t kept entirely separate from politics, with US asking if request to extradite Provos ‘would be welcomed’ — and UK officials saying it wouldn’t help pe...

British officials believed it might be unhelpful to the peace process to extradite IRA members to the US to face charges linked to a massive post-Good Friday Agreement gun-smuggling operation in 2000, declassified files reveal.

Britain - from the PM down - put intense pressure on the Irish Government to ensure they never spent a day in jail. The Taoiseach obliged, even advising on the SAS legal stance in court. Meanwhile, the PM had secret legislation drawn up to facilitate the men going on the run.

The SAS, a reckless incursion over the border, and how relations between Dublin and London hinged on the fate of eight soldiers Fifty years on, the fascinating inside story of what really happened after special forces unit were detained in Co Louth can be revealed

Almost exactly half a century after plain-clothes SAS men, one with a sawn-off shotgun, were arrested on a lonely road in Louth, a Top Secret file on what was going on has been released - having been originally shut for 100 years. It's revelatory...

How MI5, MI6, the MoD & their lawyers tried to cover up journalist Liam Clarke's discovery of 'crown jewel' IRA agent Stakeknife, even though they feared agent’s "iniquity". The story, from their own files, of how they applied immense pressure but bungled.

Oh it's nothing to do with the surname - it's my linguistic skills!

How To Unite Ireland? - Episode 3 Spotify video

For some reason I was invited on the How to Gael podcast even though my cúpla focal aren't very impressive - but it was then a very interesting discussion about Irish unity's myths, potential and problems, as seen from both sides of the border.

Fascinating story by Abdullah Sabri about how Stormont interacts with the Chinese Government: Economy Minister Caoimhe Archibald said she couldn't go to a Chinese investment event. Chinese diplomats put on pressure. She U-turned...and ultimately two SF ministers went.

Gerry Adams said he was prepared to ‘wade up to my knees in Protestant blood to united Ireland’, ex-IRA man claimed Government questioned if claims were believable — while ex-Sinn Fein President now says he never made such a remark and has ‘always been avowedly anti-sectarian’

Gerry Adams told an ex-IRA man in Long Kesh he was willing to "wade up to my knees in Protestant blood to a united Ireland", that ex-IRA man told the NIO. Adams says this claim in a declassified file is lies and he's "always been avowedly anti-sectarian".

NIO predicted 1981 hunger strike five years before it happened and warned policy ‘may well result in prisoners being allowed to die’ Official said paramilitaries ‘should be made aware’ Government was ‘quite prepared to contemplate’ their deaths

Five years before the seminal IRA hunger strike in 1981, NIO officials foresaw that it was likely and decided prisoners wouldn’t be force-fed, something which “may well result in prisoners being allowed to die”.

As the Troubles approached their zenith, Taoiseach Jack Lynch privately pressed Ted heath to back Irish unity, declassified file shows, but the PM refused, telling him most in NI were unionist and "he wasn’t prepared to tell them what they ought to want".

Senior Russian defence figure pressed for a group of ‘clever colonels’ to visit NI in late 1990s to learn about the Troubles Official feared what they’d be prepared to show the Russians could be ‘like Hamlet without the prince’

A senior Russian defence figure insistently pressed for a group of “clever colonels” to visit Northern Ireland in the late 1990s to learn about how the UK policed the Troubles.

MI5 had intelligence from ‘highly sensitive source’ on IRA’s plans to attack England in 1996 ‘This report contains intelligence from a highly sensitive source and should not be disseminated... without reference to the Security Service’

MI5 had intelligence from a “highly sensitive source” on the IRA’s plans to attack England in 1996, according to an intelligence telegram which has been declassified.

David Trimble told Tony Blair they’d both ‘turned a blind eye’ to paramilitary criminality and that ‘writing off’ ceasefire breaches must come with guarantees UUP leader told PM he was willing to ‘draw a line’ under past wrongdoing in return for ‘zero tolerance’ approach

David Trimble's 2002 IRA amnesty proposal: UUP leader told Tony Blair they’d both been willing to “turn a blind eye” to IRA and loyalist criminality — and said he was willing to “write off” major ceasefire breaches such as Colombia and Castlereagh.

‘The situation is as near a hopeless one as I have ever seen’: What future Tory grandee told PM Heath just fortnight before Bloody Sunday MP St John-Stevas visited NI in 1972, but left ‘profoundly depressed’ by unionist delusion over anti-Catholic discrimination and the Army’s optimism that the IRA would soon be defeated

Sunk in gloom, sullen despair and unionist delusion: What Tory MP told PM he found in NI, days before Bloody Sunday. At a key moment, a far more prescient view from an outsider than from the top of Stormont & Army commanders who though the IRA near-beaten.

In Conversation: Rory Carroll | Events at Waterstones Bookshops | Waterstones Events at Waterstones get you closer to the books and authors you admire most. Find information and tickets about In Conversation: Rory Carroll today.

I'll be talking to Rory Carroll about his book and about Roger Casement at Waterstones in central Belfast on Thursday night. Tickets here:

Roger Casement: Protestant British hero who became a 'rebel and a traitor'

🎧(no paywall)
Who was Sir Roger Casement? How did he end up being killed by the state he had served? Is he a straightforward hero or villain? Talking to The Guardian's @rorycarroll72.bsky.social about his terrific new book on the first knight of the realm to be hanged in centuries.

Lord Chief Justices rejected NIO pressure to remove requirement for QCs to serve Queen — to the dismay of a barrister who is now one of NI’s top judges NI’s top judicial figure feared change would mean a move to drop the title ‘Queen’s Counsel’ and was based on ‘small number of barristers’ who were engaged in ‘politically-based campaign’

Successive Lord Chief Justices repeatedly refused political pressure to weaken the requirement for senior barristers to promise to serve the monarch — to the dismay of a lawyer who is now one of Northern Ireland’s most senior judges.

Gregory Campbell the moderate? Almost as soon as DUP walked out of Good Friday Agreement talks, NIO got a surprising private message A declassified file suggests the DUP’s willingness to compromise with Sinn Fein goes back further than generally thought — and involves people seen as hardliners

Gregory Campbell the moderate? Almost as soon as the DUP walked out of the Good Friday Agreement talks, the NIO got a surprising private message from Campbell & Nigel Dodds - which hints at DUP willingness to engage with SF far earlier than widely thought.

Weeks after courtroom denial, declassified high-level intelligence claims Gerry Adams was re-elected to IRA Army Council in 1996 File sets out extent to which the IRA’s General Army Convention was being watched — and what was being recorded about named individuals

Weeks after Gerry Adams denied on oath that he was a member of the IRA, declassified intelligence discovered by the Belfast Telegraph says that in 1996 he was on the IRA Army Council – and then was re-elected to that post.

All week in @belfasttelegraph.co.uk: A series of fascinating revelations from the Kew Files - everything from Gerry Adams to Gregory Campbell and The Queen to MI5.

Killing Casement: The fall of the knight of the realm turned Irish republican icon Sir Roger Hanged for treason, new book explores the complex legacy of the decorated diplomat and 1916 rebel

Roger Casement defies easy categorisation; in some ways, he's a personification of Ireland to this day. Rory Carroll's compelling new book tells how this knight who became a traitor loathed yet aided empires & was ultimately betrayed by Irishmen and women.

As £2 a litre diesel looms, NI is more vulnerable than any other UK region... and Stormont is making things worse NI is dumping a quarter of all green energy because Stormont has bungled, yet it is refusing to face the reality of its actions

As £2 a litre diesel looms, Northern Ireland is more vulnerable than any other UK region - and Stormont is making things worse. NI is effectively dumping a quarter of all green electricity yet Stormont is refusing to face the reality of its actions.