{"title":"Elsinor Verlag e.K.","description":null,"products":[{"product_id":"9783949573033","title":"The Pen Behind the Wire","description":"\u003cp\u003eThousands of republicans were imprisoned over a thirty-year period and served lengthy sentences beginning in 1970 as a result of the struggle to end British rule in Ireland. Their experiences generated huge body of prison literature, comparable to earlier periods in the independence struggle. Former POWs, as well as writing their memoirs, have written short stories, novels, plays and screenplays and, of course, poetry. The writings of Bobby Sands, for example, have never been out of print over the past forty-two years and have been translated into many languages.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eEoghan 'Gino' Mac Cormaic from Derry served fifteen years in jail and was on the blanket protest for five years at a time when ten of his comrades died on hunger strike. Eoghan began writing poems on toilet paper and cigarette papers and smuggled them out to his family who kept them safe from British Army raids and seizures. Some of the poems were published in Republican News.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eA selection of these early 'blanket' poems, and other prison poems written after the protest, give us an insight into Eoghan and his comrades' lives - which even the prison couldn't contain - and allows us to look with them from their cell windows out into the world where hopes and dreams would be realised someday.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311011541365,"sku":"9783949573033","price":10.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9783949573033_d2900377-0f1f-4f8b-82d3-c5c1ac829674.jpg?v=1786031734"},{"product_id":"9783939483588","title":"6000 Days","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1981 ten prisoners died on hunger strike in a jail, ten miles west of Belfast. First called Long Kesh during internment (1971-1971), then the Maze Prison, then the H-Blocks, it was rarely out of the national and international news forty years ago, especially when one of the prisoners, Bobby Sands, was elected as an MP before he died after sixty-six days without food.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJim (Jaz) McCann was an eyewitness to these events. Arrested at twenty after attempting to kill a police officer, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. He and hundreds of others refused to wear a prison uniform, protested that they were political prisoners, and were locked in their cells, where they wore only a blanket, for over four years in grim conditions.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eJaz McCann knew several of the hunger strikers and in this remarkable testimony he recalls his life in the IRA, the deprivation of seventeen years behind bars, his friends and comrades, including several of the hunger strikers, his participation in the mass prison breakout in 1983, and the electoral rise of Sinn Féin following these events which had a profound effect on the subsequent political complexion of Ireland.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt is an immensely honest and raw account, full of pathos and dark humour, from a former combatant and is an important contribution to Troubles’ literature.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311166468469,"sku":"9783939483588","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9783939483588_e327121a-402f-4ee9-a46a-3eccd7e38976.jpg?v=1786031561"},{"product_id":"9783949573026","title":"Rewriting the Troubles","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn this timely and meticulously researched book, Patrick Anderson compares and contrasts Algeria’s anti-colonial struggle for independence with the republican campaign to dismantle Britain’s colonial legacy. Comparing the French and British armies, the IRA and ALN, loyalists and OAS ‘counter-terrorists’, Anderson dissects, with devastating effect, the approach of ‘constitutional’ politicians and the respective media portrayals in an analogy that for critics will be too close for comfort.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAbout the book, historian Dr Brian Feeney, in the \u003cem\u003eIrish News\u003c\/em\u003e, said, ‘Unionists, including academics, have been aware of the striking analogies between Algeria and the north for decades: they all reject the uncanny similarities as dangerous… It’s easy to see why… Accepting any analogy or similarity means accepting that the north is illegal, a temporary arrangement, and that Britain will eventually leave Ireland as the French did Algeria.’\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311171645813,"sku":"9783949573026","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9783949573026_9afe761f-42fd-4189-9fdc-6eddacbe3d7b.jpg?v=1786031733"},{"product_id":"9783949573057","title":"Captive Columns","description":"\u003cp\u003e‘Plotting was the natural consequence of the isolation we were detained in,’ wrote John Sarsfield Casey, a Fenian prisoner in Pentonville in 1866, facing deportation. The prisoners established lines of communication to keep connected to each other and to the outside world.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eRepublicans constantly defied and resisted authority. They smuggled; they planned escapes; and they disseminated news and told their stories in a literature which was central to morale and the integrity of the struggle.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIn \u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eCaptive Columns\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e Eoghan Mac Cormaic looks at the literature of the republican press which saw the production of over sixty prison titles—often handwritten or typed. From the pinpricked sheets of toilet paper in Pentonville to Bobby Sands’ poetry, written on toilet paper and smuggled out to be published, this is an astonishing story which has never been examined in such detail before.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":56311171744117,"sku":"9783949573057","price":16.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9783949573057_3f424cb3-dbb3-4246-8bfb-2cd27bbf7088.jpg?v=1786031736"},{"product_id":"mccoubrey","title":"McCoubrey","description":"\u003cp\u003eDrab, bleak Portadown, 1971, where Catholics are kept in their place, seen through the eyes of innocent, bright, mischievous and droll Barry-Joe McCoubrey, on the cusp of his teens reflecting on his own life, his family, his troubled neighbourhood—and girls.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003ePopular with his schoolmates, Barry-Joe also has broody insular tendencies and spends a lot of time analysing both others and the growing conflict spreading from Belfast and Derry to his home town of Portadown, including the Garvaghy Road and the Tunnel areas.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eBarry-Joe shares a surname with Larry McCoubrey, a well-loved BBC newsreader, famous for his end-of-programme cheesy quips and jokes. Larry’s jokes lead to banter and slagging from Barry-Joe’s classmates. However, Larry also must report increasingly bad news and we see how Barry-Joe empathises with his namesake in this task.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThis is a hilarious and immensely moving coming-of-age novel from Mark B. McCaffery.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492269629813,"sku":"9783949573040","price":13.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0612\/7193\/3106\/files\/9783949573040.jpg?v=1786529102"},{"product_id":"nation-for-all","title":"A Nation For All","description":"\u003cp\u003eThis book is about history, politics and ideas—and, above all, about Ireland’s future.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eIt weaves together the story of Ireland over the past century with the author’s own family history to argue that the time has come to rethink how we organise our society, our economy and our working lives.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eMore than a century after the partition of Ireland, the book examines the inequality and discrimination that lay at the heart of the two new states and explores how that legacy continues to shape Irish life today—socially, economically and politically.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eThat legacy has been resisted and countered by movements great and small—from struggles over the national question and the cause of labour, to the perseverance of activists who have helped bring about a renaissance in the Irish language.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003eA Nation For All\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/strong\u003e argues that Ireland can become an example for people everywhere who believe in strong, democratic nation states committed to fairness, equality and the steady improvement of citizens’ lives. In doing so, it offers a robust defence of the nation state and of sovereignty, and makes the case for the state reasserting its role in the provision of public services, in the redistribution of wealth and as an active participant in the economy.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAt its core, this is a book about aspiration: an argument for reclaiming Ireland as a shared national project, grounded in solidarity, democracy and sovereignty, and directed towards building a fairer future for all.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492271071605,"sku":"9783949573118","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":true}]},{"product_id":"the-birthday-boys","title":"The Birthday Boys","description":"\u003cp\u003eFour childhood friends from a tough North Belfast neighbourhood during the Troubles. While many of their contemporaries drifted into loyalist paramilitaries and from there to jail, the four friends aspired to better lives. They went their separate ways in adult life but pledged to get together for birthdays, no matter what.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBarry, who lives in London, joined the Royal Marines as a teenager, saw combat in the Falklands and South Armagh, is divorced and wealthy but has an inability to form a steady relationship. Colin did well, has been an accountant for thirty years, is married with two teenage daughters and lives in a middle-class suburb of the city. Doug also lives in Belfast, is married, and manages his own secondhand car dealership. Fred had been a promising football player until an injury ended his career. He and his English partner David live in Spain and intend to marry in Belfast due to extraordinary changes in a society where fundamentalists once marched under the banner, ‘Save Ulster from Sodomy’.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOther troubles now afflict the four – the haunting legacy of conflict; the challenges of protecting one’s family; and just navigating life against a background radiation of angst, fear, insecurity and mortality.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe Birthday Boys grew side by side in their youth but despite time and distance never grew apart. Thompson tells the story of their enduring friendship with great skill, passion, humour and humanity.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Gardners","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":57492271694197,"sku":"9783949573125","price":18.0,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}]},{"product_id":"rita","title":"Rita","description":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eI knew, even though none of this was discussed around the\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003efamily table, that there was something wrong from an early\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eage, that things were not normal. 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For many adults it was safer to live\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ewith their head in the sand because the alternative meant\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003ehaving to do something about it, and the prospects of bringing\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cem\u003eabout change were not only slim but came at a cost.\u003c\/em\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\n\n\u003cp\u003eRita O’Hare grew up in West Belfast, a community alienated from unionist one-party government, a people suffering decades of sectarian discrimination, with the threat of state violence as reprisal should they attempt to challenge their second-class citizenship.\u003c\/p\u003e\n\n\u003cp\u003eAs a mother of three young children she felt she could no longer ignore what was going on and made a stand by joining the Irish Republican Army. 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