Amazon.com Review
The violent struggles of Northern Ireland have consumed journalist Peter Taylor since his first assignment there in 1972. One fateful day, "Bloody Sunday," 14 unarmed men were gunned down by British paratroopers; this was the turning point in Taylor's journalistic career, inspiring him to make 50 documentaries and write five books on the troubled nation. Behind the Mask, his sixth, is a provocative foray into the organization so synonymous with violence: the Irish Republican Army and its political wing of Sinn Fein. Based on one of Taylor's television documentaries shown in both the United Kindom and the United States, he was given unprecedented access to members of the Republican movement--a rare journalistic feat. Taylor describes the interviews as "intense, often emotional and remarkably frank."
From his interviews with dozens of I.R.A. and Sinn Fein members (including some confessed killers), Taylor gained fascinating insight into the movement's past, present, and future goals. The I.R.A. is certainly not portrayed in a heroic light; Taylor is graphic in the descriptions of atrocities such as Enniskillen and the Harrods bombing. But the I.R.A. and Sinn Fein are given a voice, and readers may draw their own conclusions. Behind the Mask is an important book for those who want a better understanding of the conflict that has ripped Northern Ireland apart.
Review
The book tracks the I.R.A. from a time when it considered its war to be winnable to an interim period when it combined the tactics of politcs and terror.... Taylor doesn't try to examine the psychology of those who took up the gun, but he does capture the inevitability of that destiny for so many young Catholics growing up in the dreary housing projects of Belfast. -- The New York Times Book Review
