Kitson’s Irish War: The brigadier behind Britain’s dirty war in the North
In a new history of the early days of the Troubles, barrister David Burke paints a picture of the man in charge of the British army’s operations as cold, solitary and utterly ruthless
Kitson’s Irish War: Mastermind of the Dirty War in Ireland
By David Burke
Mercier, €16.99
In 1971, Brigadier Frank Kitson published a military manual called Low Intensity Operations that contained one of the worst predictions ever made. “The fact that the [British] army is so heavily engaged in Ireland now,” he wrote, “makes it unlikely that it will be involved in exactly this task between 1975 and 1980 – because it is reasonable to hope ...