Moloney, Ed 1948-

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MOLONEY, Ed 1948-

PERSONAL: Born 1948, in England. Education: Attended schools in Northern Ireland.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Offıce—c/o Author Mail, W. W. Norton, Inc., 500 Fifth Ave., New York, NY 10110.

CAREER: Journalist and writer. Former Northern Ireland Editor, Irish Times; former Northern Editor, Dublin Sunday Tribune. Commentator on television, including British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and Cable News Network (CNN).

AWARDS, HONORS: Named Irish Journalist of the Year, 1999.

WRITINGS:

(With Andy Pollack) Paisley, Poolberg Press (Swords, Ireland), 1986.

A Secret History of the IRA, Norton (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to books, including The Media and Northern Ireland, edited by Bill Rolston, Macmillan Academic (Houndsmills, Basingstoke, England), 1991. Contributor to periodicals, including Washington Post, Guardian, and Independent.

SIDELIGHTS: Journalist Ed Moloney has been covering Northern Ireland for more than two decades for newspapers in Ireland, England, and America. He has been commended in particular for his writings on the Irish Republican Army and its activities, a subject that is fraught with controversy and the potential for personal consequences. David Trimble in the Spectator called Moloney a "well respected journalist" who is "a reliable guide to the machinations within the republican movement." In the New York Review of Books, Fintan O'Toole likewise noted that Moloney "is widely accepted as an especially authoritative figure" on the politics of Northern Ireland.

Moloney himself made news in 1999 when he was ordered to turn over notes he had made during an interview with a member of a Protestant paramilitary group who was implicated in a murder. Moloney faced steep fines and a possible prison sentence, but he successfully argued in court that his relinquishing of his notes would not only destroy his own credibility as a journalist but also set a dangerous precedent for all reportage in the United Kingdom. With broad support in England and America, Moloney was eventually vindicated when Ireland's senior judge ruled that he did not have to comply with the order.

In 2002 Moloney published A Secret History of the IRA, a book that explores the activities of the Irish Republican Army from the 1960s to the Good Friday agreement of 1998. The work concentrates in particular on the career of Gerry Adams, a member of Sinn Fein who has publicly denied any role in the IRA. As Moloney sees it, Adams has worked quietly and adroitly for decades in order to craft a peaceful solution to Northern Ireland's "Troubles" that would be acceptable to the hard-line IRA. O'Toole called A Secret History of the IRA "formidably detailed" and "fascinating," adding that the core of the book "is both persuasive and curiously hopeful."

Most reviewers commended Moloney not only on the detail he provides in A Secret History of the IRA, but also on his unbiased approach to a subject fraught with sectarianism and strong emotions. In the New York Times Book Review, Murray Sayle observed that the author "throws much new light, though of necessity on only one side, on a far from finished conflict. He's made an important contribution to our understanding just the same." According to Fred Barbash in the Washington Post Book World, "Moloney's unsentimental, albeit pro-Republican, portrayal of one of the world's oldest continuously operating insurrectionist forces deserves landmark status in the field. . . . Moloney superbly de-romanticizes the IRA." Nation correspondent Eamonn McCann wrote: "This is the best book yet written about the Provisional Irish Republican Army. . . . In fact it's evident from the text that [Moloney] has received unprecedented cooperation from members and ex-members of the IRA. This is a close-up picture of one of the most secret organizations on earth during, perhaps, the final phase of its tumultuous existence." McCann added that Moloney "gives us a portrait crowded with vivid detail where previously we had a rough sketch daubed in darkness."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, October 1, 2002, Keir Graff, review of ASecret History of the IRA, p. 274.

Economist, February 21, 1987, Nicholas Harman, "The Ulster Klan," pp. 91-92.

Listener Review of Books, January 22, 1987, Conor Cruise O'Brien, review of Paisley, pp. 23-24.

Nation, September 6, 1999, Alexander Cockburn, "The Case of Ed Moloney," p. 9; November 18, 2002, Eamonn McCann, "The Real IRA," p. 44.

New York Review of Books, February 27, 2003, Fintan O'Toole, "The Taming of a Terrorist."

New York Times Book Review, November 10, 2002, Murray Sayle, "Bleeding Ireland," p. 8.

Observer, November 24, 2002, Henry McDonald, "Teething Troubles."

Publishers Weekly, September 30, 2002, review of ASecret History of the IRA, p. 59.

Spectator, November 22, 1986, Enoch Powell, "The Archetypal Demagogue," pp. 32-33; December 14, 2002, David Trimble, "Opportunists and Tacticians, but Poor Strategists," p. 73.

Times Literary Supplement, February 20, 1987, Roy Foster, "Dynamically Immovable," p. 180.

Washington Post Book World, October 6, 2002, Fred Barbash, "End Run," p. 6.