By July 1981 four republican hunger strikers had already died in Long Kesh Prison. A fifth, Joe McDonnell, was clinging to life. To outsiders, Margaret Thatcher appeared unbending; yet far from the prying eyes of the press, her government was making a substantial offer to the prisoners. This is an untold story of the hunger strikers.

"One of the most important books to emerge from the Troubles, and definitely the most courageous."--The Sunday Times ***"Richard O'Rawe deserves praise for charging one of the most cynical leaderships anywhere in this island with manipulating the courage and determination of the hunger strikers."--The Guardian ***After the recent release of historical state and personal papers, Richard O'Rawe's courageous statements, ten years after Blanketmen's initial publication, stand vindicated. At the center of O'Rawe's book lies the disclosure that six of the ten H-Block hunger strikers starved...

Gerry Conlon was elated and outspoken on the steps of the Old Bailey upon his release, but beneath the surface he was a shattered and broken man. Wrongly convicted as an IRA bomber, he spent 15 years in an English jail for a crime he didn't commit; his father, who attempted to protest his arrest, was himself arrested and sentenced for the same crime, and tragically died in jail. A psychiatrist and leading physician interviewed for this book, said Conlon was the worst case of post-traumatic stress he'd ever seen. In the Name of the Son is a viciously personal and compelling account of Conlon's...