Ian Cobain - Anatomy of a Killing: Life and Death on a Divided Island

Words are rarely neutral in Northern Ireland. Or, if you prefer, they are rarely neutral in the six counties. So often, the use of one term Derry, say, rather than Londonderry appears immediately to place the writer or speaker on one side of the divide, or the other.

Samuel Johnson was doubtless correct when he declared that language is the dress of thought, and I have thought about these two traditions and attempted to remain sensitive to them, but not hobbled by them. I believe that understanding why so many men went to prison during the Troubles, for example and attempting to comprehend something of their experiences of incarceration and resistance is more critical than the question of whether that prison should properly be called Her Majestys Prison Maze, or Long Kesh. It was both.

As a consequence, I have employed the term that appeared to me to be most apt within the context in which it is being used. So the north-east corner of the island is at times the north of Ireland, most frequently Northern Ireland, and occasionally Ulster.

This is a book that focuses on the actions of members of the IRA. They will be described as both gunmen and volunteers. They were prosecuted as terrorists. Some members of the IRA were, of course, thugs; some were idealists, dedicated to progressive political change.

They, like the men and women of the Royal Ulster Constabulary and the British army, were also husbands and wives and sons and fathers. I have attempted to be fair to all of them. More important to me than the language I have used to describe them is my belief that we should not lose sight of the fact that they were all ordinary men and women.