Historian’s book on controversial Kilmichael ambush is published

THE Kilmichael Ambush of November 28th 1920 remains one of the most controversial IRA attacks during the Irish War of Independence. A new book by historian Eve Morrison is a comprehensive account of both the ambush and the intense debates that followed.

Kilmichael: The Life and Afterlife of an Ambush explores the events, memory and historiography of the ambush, from 1920 to the present day. It places the event within a wider framework of interwar European events, global ‘memory wars’ and current scholarship relating to Irish, British, oral and military history.

She reconstructs both ‘British’ and ‘Irish’ perspectives on this much-debated attack. The book features extensive archival research, including the late Peter Hart’s papers, as well as many other new sources from British and Irish archives, most notably previously unavailable oral history interviews with Kilmichael veterans.