Great Hatred

<b>THE IRISH TOP 10 BESTSELLER</b> <p/><b>A gripping investigation into one of Irish<br>history's greatest mysteries </b><i>Great Hatred</i><b> reveals the true story behind one of the most<br>significant political assassinations to ever have been committed on British<br>soil.<br></b><b><br></b>Heart-stopping<br>. . . The book is both forensic and a page-turner and ultimately deeply<br>tragic for Ireland as much as for the murder victim. - <b>MICHAEL PORTILLO</b></p><br>Gripping from start to finish. McGreevy turns a forensic<br>mind to a political assassination that changed the course of history <br>uncovering a trove of unseen evidence in the process. - <b>ANITA ANAND</b> author of <i>The Patient Assassin<br></i><br>Invaluable. <b><i>IRISH TIMES<br></i></b><br>Intelligent and insightful. <b><i>IRISH INDEPENDENT<br></i></b><br>On 22 June 1922 Sir Henry Wilson - the former head of the British army and one<br>of those credited with winning the First World War - was shot and killed by two<br>veterans of that war turned IRA members in what was the most significant<br>political murder to have taken place on British soil for more than a century.<br>His assassins were well-educated and pious men. One had lost a leg during the<br>Battle of Passchendaele. Shocking British society to the core the shooting caused<br>consternation in the government and almost restarted the conflict between<br>Britain and Ireland that had ended with the Anglo-Irish Treaty just five months<br>earlier. Wilson's assassination triggered the Irish Civil War which cast the<br>darkest of shadows over the new Irish State. <p/>Who ordered the killing? Why did two English-born Irish nationalists kill an<br>Irish-born British imperialist? What was Wilson's role in the Northern Ireland<br>government and the violence which matched the intensity of the Troubles fifty<br>years later? Why would Michael Collins who risked his life to sign a peace<br>treaty with Great Britain want one of its most famous soldiers dead and how<br>did the Wilson assassination lead to Collins' tragic death in an ambush two<br>months later? <p/>Drawing upon newly released archival material and never-before-seen<br>documentation <i>Great Hatred</i> is a revelatory work that sheds light on a moment that changed the<br>course of Irish and British history for ever.</p>