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Books

A Troubles novel with plenty of violence and, thank heaven, some sex too

A review of Ashes in the Wind, by Christopher Bland. It's not all arson, ambushes, beatings and murders. Just mostly

13 September 2014

9:00 AM

13 September 2014

9:00 AM

Ashes in the Wind Christopher Bland

Head of Zeus, pp.402, £14.99, ISBN: 9781781859346

‘The Anglo-Irish, their tribe, are dying. . . . They will go without a struggle, unlamented,’ Christopher Bland, 76, declares at the outset of his exciting, poignant and ultimately consoling debut novel. He refers particularly to the Protestant landed gentry, who achieved political and economic ascendancy in Ireland even before the Penal Laws disenfranchised and dispossessed the Catholic majority, until, in the 20th century, rebellion and civil war brought about independence, with incomplete national unity.

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