On the morning of 21 November 1920, Jane Boyle walked to Sunday Mass in the church where she would be married five days later. That afternoon she went with her fiancé to watch Tipperary and Dublin play a Gaelic football match at Croke Park. Across the city fourteen men lay dead in their beds after a synchronised IRA attack designed to cripple British intelligence services in Ireland. Trucks of police and military rumbled through the city streets as hundreds of people clamoured at the metal gates of Dublin Castle seeking refuge. Some of them were headed for Croke Park.
Award-winning journalist and author Michael Foley recounts the extraordinary story of Bloody Sunday in Croke Park and the 90 seconds of shooting that changed Ireland forever. In a deeply intimate portrait he tells for the first time the stories of those killed, the police and military personnel who were in Croke Park that day, and the families left shattered in its aftermath, all against the backdrop of a fierce conflict that stretched from the streets of Dublin and the hedgerows of Tipperary to the halls of Westminster.
Updated with new information and photographs.
Contents
Names and Acronyms 13
Cast of Principal Characters 15
Prologue 21
The Invisible War 34
PART I POLITICS AND WAR, 1918–1920
1 The Boy with the Penny Package 45
2 The Outlaws 56
3 The Reluctant General 78
4 The Heritage of Hate 97
PART II GAELIC FOOTBALL IN DUBLIN AND TIPPERARY, AND THE RISE OF THE GAA, 1884–1920
5 A New Force 119
6 Faith Restored 140
7 The Brainy Bunch 156
8 The Challenge 170
PART III CROKE PARK AND BLOODY SUNDAY, 21 NOVEMBER 1920
9 Morning – 7am to Midday 187
10 Afternoon – 11am to 3.25pm 199
11 The Bloodied Field – 3.25pm to 5.30pm 214
12 The Aftermath 231
PART IV THE BLOODY SUNDAY INQUIRIES AND THE SEARCH FOR TRUTH, 1920–1921
13 The Violence of Truth 247
14 The Funerals 265
15 The Inquiries 280
16 War Stories 299
17 The Dead 319
Postscript 323
Selected Bibliography 327
Index 337
