Book Review

Rose Dugdale: The remarkable story of an upper-class debutante turned republican revolutionary

Irish Daily Mail news editor Sean O’Driscoll shines a light on the wild life and times of the woman behind the Russborough House art theft, which was only one of her daring exploits carried out on behalf of the IRA

Rose Dugdale pictured outside the Tottenham Civil Rights Centre: the English woman became one of the highest-profile republicans to be imprisoned in the Republic of Ireland. Picture: Shutterstock

There are episodes in Rose Dugdale’s life that read like something from the mind of a heavyweight thriller writer such as Frederick Forsyth or Robert Ludlum. In 1974, she and some like-minded IRA revolutionaries, including her lover Eddie Gallagher, hijacked a helicopter at gunpoint in Donegal. They forced the pilot to fly across the border and hover over the heavily fortified RUC station at Strabane, while they attempted to drop home-made bombs in milk churns. ...