A NEW paperback edition of the highly lauded memoir Dirty Linen is set to be published this Thursday.
Part memoir, part oral testimony, Martin Doyle, Books Editor of The Irish Times, offers a personal, intimate history of the Troubles seen through the microcosm of a single rural parish, Tullylish in County Down, part of both the Linen Triangle – heartland of the North’s defining industry – and the Murder Triangle – the Badlands devastated by paramilitary violence. He lifts the veil of silence drawn over the horrors of the past, recording in heartrending detail the terrible toll the conflict took – more than twenty violent deaths in a few square miles – and the long tail of trauma it has left behind.
Neighbours and classmates who lost loved ones in the conflict, survivors maimed in bomb attacks and victims of sectarianism, both Catholic and Protestant, entrust Doyle with their stories. Writing with a literary sensibility, he skilfully shows how the once dominant local linen industry serves as a metaphor for communal division but also for the solidarity that transcended the divide. To those who might ask why you would want to reopen old wounds, the answer might be that some wounds have never been allowed to heal.
Martin Doyle is the Books Editor of The Irish Times. A former Editor of the Irish Post, he has worked in journalism for over three decades and is a regular contributor to the media and arts programming.
His first book, Dirty Linen, was published by Merrion Press and was shortlisted for the Non-Fiction Book of the Year at the An Post Irish Book Awards 2023.
Dirty Linen is priced £14.99.
