The 1976 bestseller.

A Trinty College Dublin professor suggests my article on the 50th anniversary of Leon Uris’s nonfiction Ireland: a terrible beauty and popular novel, Trinity, underestimated how popular the American author’s work was among contemporary Irish republicans. My piece appeared in the July/August issue of History Ireland.

In a letter to the magazine, Dr. Brian Hanley says that Trinity was a favourite of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands, who memorized and recited passages of the novel to his comrades on the H-Blocks. Hanley notes other examples. Read his full letter.

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I want to note the passing of Irish Times journalist Frank McDonald, who covered the environment and urban planning for nearly four decades. I met McDonald during my 2001 German Marshall Fund journalism fellowship in Ireland. His death is a great loss to the profession.