Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber

Oct 5, 2024 3:34 AM

Author:Sean O'Driscoll,Gerry O'Brien

Brought to you by penguin.

The astonishing story of the English heiress who devoted her life to the IRA

She grew up in a Chelsea townhouse and on a Devon estate.

She was presented to the Queen at Buckingham Palace as a debutante in 1958.

She trained at Oxford as an academic economist and had a love affair with a female professor (who was on the rebound from Iris Murdoch).

At thirty, she commenced giving her inheritance away to the poor.

In 1972, the deadliest year of the Northern Irish Troubles, she travelled to Ireland and joined the IRA.

Sean O'Driscoll's Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber tells the astonishing story of Rose Dugdale, who went on to become a committed terrorist, participating in a major art heist and a bombing raid on a police and army barracks; who kept a pregnancy secret for nine months in prison and gave birth there; and who ended up at the heart of the IRA's bomb-making operation during its deadly final spasms in the 1990s. Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber is both the page-turning biography of a remarkable woman and a groundbreaking account of the inner workings of a terrorist organization.

Reviews

Fascinating . . . O'Driscoll's research is impressive

—— Ben Macintyre , The Times

Riveting

—— Roy Foster , TLS

Generous and well researched

—— Rosa Lyster , LRB

An absorbing, well-researched and extremely well-written account of a life that almost defies belief

—— David McCullagh , RTÉ

Superb . . . an even-handed and thrilling gallop through [Dugdale's] improbable life

—— Daily Telegraph

Possibly the most extraordinary book you'll read this year

—— Irish Examiner

Unputdownable . . . jaw-dropping

—— Joe Duffy

It would be hard to overstate how good this book is . . . a fantastic read

—— Eilis O'Hanlon , Sunday Independent

[A] pacey, well-researched book

—— Frank Coughlin , Irish Independent

Well-researched . . . balanced

—— Charles Lysaght , Irish Times

Sean O'Driscoll's fair-minded examination of her extraordinary, often violent life . . . acknowledges her humanity and viciousness

—— Observer

Rich, compelling, and surprising. Fundamental physics can be equal parts awe-inspiring and head-spinning, and Close masterfully captures those qualities in this deeply satisfying tale of Peter Higgs's convoluted, and very human, journey through life and science.

—— author of The Ascent of Information , Caleb Scharf

beautifully, engagingly written ... I was reassured by the characteristic wisdom and honesty of Close's judgement that, while the discovery of the Higgs particle completes the Standard Model of the atom, "Internal completeness is a mathematical requirement, whereas describing the world around us is the demand of natural philosophy". That sentence alone makes Elusive my book of the year.

—— Raymond Tallis , Times Literary Supplement Books of the Year

Frank Close is probably the perfect person to tell the tale of Higgs and his boson. A serious physicist himself, he is also an exceptional author - and, unlike with most authors, his subject actually occasionally speaks to him.

—— Tom Whipple , Times Books of the Year

the first full biography of Higgs ... focuses just as much on Higgs the particle as he does on Higgs the scientist, and the physics concepts he explores can be daunting. But this excellent book is well worth the effort.

—— Mike Perricone , Symmetry Books of the Year

A compelling account of the long search for the Higgs boson

—— Books of the Year , Economist

Because there would be no atoms or molecules without the intervention of the Higgs field, our very existence is a consequence of its reality ... a compulsive read. Besides explaining the physics and exploring the many personalities involved, it also conveys the excitement of physics research, the missed opportunities, the happy coincidences, the false trails, the social networks, the collaborations and professional rivalries. Like an established scientific fact that will stand for all time, this book is a definitive account of an historic scientific achievement.

—— Rick Marshall , Physics Education

Not so much a history book as a book of historical significance

—— BBC History Magazine, *Best Books of 2022*

No other English-language biography has so successfully given us a portrait of him as man and monarch ... superb.

—— Gareth Russell , The Times

The best single-volume account of the reign in any language

—— John Adamson , Sunday Times

Authoritative ... Mansel is ideally positioned to examine Louis' record ... Time and space both yield before Mansel's authorial ambition

—— Minoo Dinshaw , Daily Telegraph

A superb biography ... wonderfully detailed and fluent ... Mansel is alive to every nuance

—— Hamish Robinson , Oldie

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