Killing Rage. This item is unavailable.Killing Rage

This is an account of how an angry young man can cross the line that divides theoretical support for violence from a state of 'killing rage', in which the murder of neighbour becomes thinkable. Over 3000 people have died in Northern Ireland since 1969, and most of them have died at the hands of their neighbours. The intimacy of the Ulster conflict, what it means to carry out a political murder when in all probability the victim is personally known, or lives in a nearby street, is described accurately by an honest participant. The book does not attempt to soften the impact of the events it describes through euphemism or rhetoric. It is a truthful picture of the brutality and waste caused by the IRA's unwinnable campaign, and of its human consequences. It is also a self-portrait of the despair and disintegration, the hardening to conscience and grief, that accompany political violence.

Eamon Collins was born in 1954 into a family that had lived for generations in the Camlough area, near Newry, County Down. He broke with the IRA after the events described in Killing Rage. Following the publication of the book, and while continuing to live in a nationalist area of Newry, Eamon Collins spoke out about paramilitary violence and the fragile peace in the north of Ireland. In the early hours of 27 January 1999, while taking his dogs for a walk, he was murdered near his home.

Mick McGovern was born in London in 1962. He worked on Thames Television's This Week programme, and his writing has been published in the New Statesman and the Observer. He has co-written several books, including Killing Rage, The Dream Solution, Soldier of the Queen and Hateland.