Mark Frankland is a remarkable author. One of the few to dare to use a work of fiction to tackle head-on the subject of The Troubles of Northern Ireland, he has penned a comprehensive, warts-and-all and even-handed account of that long, internecine conflict.
In writing Terrible Beauty, he might well have incurred the wrath of either side of the sectarian divide – or, indeed, of both sides. But Mark Frankland is also a remarkable storyteller, because he pulls off the impossible. In a narrative spanning more than three decades and interspersed with actual events and real people, he weaves together with fairness and precision, and always with confidence, the parallel life stories of the two central characters. Through their eyes, we are privy to utterly contrasting visions of the treacherous, vicious world that is Ulster. We meet and understand the motives of the men of violence in both camps. And we learn time and again of the arrogant, indifferent and often cowardly role in the conflict of successive British Governments.
In addition to being a damn good thriller in its own right that is nail-biting to the very end, Terrible Beauty is to be recommended as an unbiased and reliable history of The Troubles. The book has the ring of authenticity about it. When I read the author’s end-notes, I wasn’t surprised to discover the scale of his research in preparing for the novel. Nor was I surprised to learn that the two main protagonists – the Republican Sean O’Neill and the Loyalist Davie Stanton – are based on real people, real players in the Ulster cauldron – “two of the most impressive men I have ever met”, says Frankland.
But have you noticed what I did there? Unconsciously, without thought, I placed the Republican first, the Loyalist second; the Catholic before the Protestant. The book doesn’t do that – it is balanced throughout – but I did. I did it on reflex to reflect my sympathies, my loyalties. You see, in the same decade that the fictional Davie Stanton’s grandfather took up arms with Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force, my own grandfather on my mother’s side took up opposing arms in the south of Ireland, joining the Irish Republican Army in 1918, when he was barely eighteen, and going on to serve in the Irish War of Independence under Michael Collins. That War was a direct consequence of the Easter Rising of 1916, when a group of poets and dreamers and old men took over the General Post Office in Dublin and proclaimed an Ireland free from British rule. “A terrible beauty is born” wrote William Butler Yeats shortly after the foolhardy rising was brutally quelled, the novel’s title being borrowed from that line of his.
The story of the birth of the “terrible beauty” has stayed with me all my life; you could say I was weaned on it. I’ve stood and wept on the spot in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin where they executed those poets and dreamers and old men – “MacDonagh and MacBride/And Connolly and Pearse” and ould Tom Clarke and many others. I know in my heart that I’ll never forgive the British Government for those executions, for their duplicity beforehand in allowing and abetting Carson’s “army”, and for their cowardice in capitulating to the bullies and bigots of Ulster. I know in my heart that I will always detest the Orangeism that is the way of life of those bigots and bullies. And I know in my heart that while brave authors like Mark Frankland will continue even-handedly to analyse and explain the Ulster conflict in novels like Terrible Beauty, they will not be able to shift the legacy of the British Government’s actions, the terrible legacy of hate. Not until the institution of that hate, the Orange Order, is dismantled and outlawed throughout the British Isles. And it would take a very courageous Government indeed to do that.
I’ll close my review of this excellent book with an anecdote. I worked closely for many years with two Ulstermen. Both were intelligent and articulate, and both had moved from Belfast to Scotland to escape The Troubles at home. Whenever we all got together for a drink, invariably this pair would gleefully swap stories about the slow-witted Taigs they had known back home. Invariably, too, they would speak contemptuously of the Republic as if it were some poor, illiterate neighbour, decrying its littered streets, its pot-holed roads and its inability to organise a wake let alone the country’s economy – and this in spite of the fact that their homeland had been reduced to an economic desert. On one occasion, another colleague, a Geordie with little or no knowledge of Ireland’s history, declared his interest in seeing Neil Jordan’s recently released movie, Michael Collins. One of the Ulstermen, who possessed a PhD from Queen’s University of Belfast, spluttered over his pint. “Michael Collins? Michael Collins?” he spat out. “He was nothing but a Fenian thug.” A peace agreement in Northern Ireland was almost tangible at the time, but that didn’t matter. There was no thought given. No conciliation. No surrender. The legacy of hate continued unabated.
Go to Amazon today and download the Kindle version of Terrible Beauty or order a copy of the paperback.
In writing Terrible Beauty, he might well have incurred the wrath of either side of the sectarian divide – or, indeed, of both sides. But Mark Frankland is also a remarkable storyteller, because he pulls off the impossible. In a narrative spanning more than three decades and interspersed with actual events and real people, he weaves together with fairness and precision, and always with confidence, the parallel life stories of the two central characters. Through their eyes, we are privy to utterly contrasting visions of the treacherous, vicious world that is Ulster. We meet and understand the motives of the men of violence in both camps. And we learn time and again of the arrogant, indifferent and often cowardly role in the conflict of successive British Governments.
In addition to being a damn good thriller in its own right that is nail-biting to the very end, Terrible Beauty is to be recommended as an unbiased and reliable history of The Troubles. The book has the ring of authenticity about it. When I read the author’s end-notes, I wasn’t surprised to discover the scale of his research in preparing for the novel. Nor was I surprised to learn that the two main protagonists – the Republican Sean O’Neill and the Loyalist Davie Stanton – are based on real people, real players in the Ulster cauldron – “two of the most impressive men I have ever met”, says Frankland.
But have you noticed what I did there? Unconsciously, without thought, I placed the Republican first, the Loyalist second; the Catholic before the Protestant. The book doesn’t do that – it is balanced throughout – but I did. I did it on reflex to reflect my sympathies, my loyalties. You see, in the same decade that the fictional Davie Stanton’s grandfather took up arms with Carson’s Ulster Volunteer Force, my own grandfather on my mother’s side took up opposing arms in the south of Ireland, joining the Irish Republican Army in 1918, when he was barely eighteen, and going on to serve in the Irish War of Independence under Michael Collins. That War was a direct consequence of the Easter Rising of 1916, when a group of poets and dreamers and old men took over the General Post Office in Dublin and proclaimed an Ireland free from British rule. “A terrible beauty is born” wrote William Butler Yeats shortly after the foolhardy rising was brutally quelled, the novel’s title being borrowed from that line of his.
The story of the birth of the “terrible beauty” has stayed with me all my life; you could say I was weaned on it. I’ve stood and wept on the spot in Kilmainham Gaol in Dublin where they executed those poets and dreamers and old men – “MacDonagh and MacBride/And Connolly and Pearse” and ould Tom Clarke and many others. I know in my heart that I’ll never forgive the British Government for those executions, for their duplicity beforehand in allowing and abetting Carson’s “army”, and for their cowardice in capitulating to the bullies and bigots of Ulster. I know in my heart that I will always detest the Orangeism that is the way of life of those bigots and bullies. And I know in my heart that while brave authors like Mark Frankland will continue even-handedly to analyse and explain the Ulster conflict in novels like Terrible Beauty, they will not be able to shift the legacy of the British Government’s actions, the terrible legacy of hate. Not until the institution of that hate, the Orange Order, is dismantled and outlawed throughout the British Isles. And it would take a very courageous Government indeed to do that.
I’ll close my review of this excellent book with an anecdote. I worked closely for many years with two Ulstermen. Both were intelligent and articulate, and both had moved from Belfast to Scotland to escape The Troubles at home. Whenever we all got together for a drink, invariably this pair would gleefully swap stories about the slow-witted Taigs they had known back home. Invariably, too, they would speak contemptuously of the Republic as if it were some poor, illiterate neighbour, decrying its littered streets, its pot-holed roads and its inability to organise a wake let alone the country’s economy – and this in spite of the fact that their homeland had been reduced to an economic desert. On one occasion, another colleague, a Geordie with little or no knowledge of Ireland’s history, declared his interest in seeing Neil Jordan’s recently released movie, Michael Collins. One of the Ulstermen, who possessed a PhD from Queen’s University of Belfast, spluttered over his pint. “Michael Collins? Michael Collins?” he spat out. “He was nothing but a Fenian thug.” A peace agreement in Northern Ireland was almost tangible at the time, but that didn’t matter. There was no thought given. No conciliation. No surrender. The legacy of hate continued unabated.
Go to Amazon today and download the Kindle version of Terrible Beauty or order a copy of the paperback.