Telling The Truth Is Dangerous

One of the first biographies of an Irish historian, this book relates the C20 struggle to show that Ireland had a history at all, and then to take that history away from the propagandists. The story is told through the life of Robert Dudley Edwards, famed as an eccentric but emerging as a deft operator in a dangerous political world. It also shows how the study of history changed after World War II, and why so many intelligence officers — from Hugh Trevor-Roper to Asa Briggs to Desmond Williams — became historians after 1945. Written by his granddaughter, the journalist Neasa MacErlean, the book also describes his harrowing family life, and the damage inflicted by the narcissist personality disorder of his older daughter Mary. His younger two children, Owen and Ruth, went on to become well-known historians, and the book also explains the dynamics of this family of historians.