October 2002

Born in Belfast in 1920, Joe Cahill has been an IRA man all his life. 'I was born in a united Ireland,' he says. 'I want to die in a united Ireland.' This ambition has motivated his entire life.

It has been a life of imprisonment, of hunger strikes, of being on the run, in safe houses, in action, and latterly in talks and negotiations. IRA activists rarely, if ever, speak about their lives or their organization; but in this book Cahill gives his full and frank story, his viewpoint, his experiences - from Northern Irish prison cells of the 1940s when the birch and cat-o-nine-tails were still in use, to the corridors of power in Washington DC when the Good Friday Agreement was being negotiated.

Sentenced to death in 1942, he describes how he prepared to meet his fate; though reprieved, he remembers vividly the awful day when his cellmate and close friend was executed. He tells of the visit he made to Colonel Gaddafi to smuggle arms and ammunition, and the fateful voyage of the Claudia; Bloody Sunday and the burning of the British Embassy in Dublin; the high-drama helicopter escape of IRA prisoners from Mountjoy Jail. He reveals how he rose through the ranks of the IRA and the circumstances of his deportation from the United States.

This is the story of an extraordinary journey, Cahill's own life mirroring the growth, changes and development of the republican movement as a whole through more than sixty years of intense involvement.