Alan F. Parkinson

Alan F. Parkinson is senior lecturer in history and education at South Bank University in London, England. He is also the author of Ulster Loyalism and the British Media, published in 1998, and Belfast's Unholy War: The Troubles of the 1920s, published in 2004. Belfast's Unholy War looks at street violence in Belfast, Northern Ireland, in the early 1920s during the Irish War of Independence; most of the street violence was part of a guerrilla campaign leveled against the British government in Ireland by the Irish Republican Army. Specifically, the book seeks to answer why so many civilians in Belfast during that time were attacked by fellow citizens, the army, and the police. According to Irish Literary Supplement critic Aoife Bhreatnach, "Although the book contains invaluable information, it regrettably does little to illuminate the often ugly human motives behind violence in Northern Ireland. Since the author points out that the events of 1920-22 profoundly affected the psyche of both communities for decades, it is a pity that little more than the ‘bloody, gloomy and nihilistic’ aspects of the story emerge from this book. … Hate, murder and politics in Northern Ireland awaits systematic analysis." Bhreatnach also noted that Belfast's Unholy War "is a fluidly written and coherent book. The index is a particularly useful feature, giving victims' names as well as the appellations given to particularly gruesome incidents, such as the Kincaid Terrace murders."