Course of the Conflict in Northern Ireland
'Hope Against History' is a concise and readable narrative of the last thirty turbulent years in Northern Ireland. Taking the reader from the Belfast of the 1960s through the civil rights movement to the birth of the Provisional IRA and the rise of the Ulster Defence Association, it plots a coherent line out of the violence and politics that often lay behind it. Jack Holland lucidly describes the key events and players in each decade and for the first time reveals how the Provisional IRA was in fact defeated and forced along the road of peace, leading to the current settlement.