Tim Pat Coogan

Timothy Patrick Coogan is an Irish historian, broadcaster, newspaper columnist and formerly editor of the Irish Press newspaper.

Coogan, son of a Volunteer of the Old IRA (1919-1922), is a former student of Blackrock College in Dublin, and has written controversial but popular books such as The IRA, Ireland Since the Rising, On the Blanket, Michael Collins and Eamon de Valera.

His biography of Eamon de Valera proved the most controversial, taking issue with the former Irish president's reputation and achievements, in favor of those of Collins, whom he regards as indispensable to the creation of the new State.

While Coogan's books are clearly written from a nationalist perspective, and the republican apologeticism in, for example, his book, The IRA, is redolent on every page, Coogan has always successfully maintained the pose of a well-meaning moderate.

However the republican irredentism and political extremism which Coogan put on display in a piece he wrote for the New York City-based Irish Voice just before the 90th anniversary of the Easter Rising put an end to any claim of moderation which Coogan (who blames "the Troubles" in Northern Ireland on Unionism, especially what he labels "Paisleyism") can henceforth make (see [[1]]), should he bother to do so.

Excerpt from the 4/12/2006-4/18/2006 Irish Voice (page 11) titled "The Lessons of 1916":

Questions like [sic] should 1916 be commemorated? Should there be a military parade? These questions are in reality irritating diversionary tactics utilized by those whose real mental posture is the colonial cringe and whose political philosophy is crypto unionism.

The basic importance of 1916 is that it formed a substantive, motivating role in the securing of independence, one of the three great turning points of Ireland in the 20th century...[w]ithout the foregoing the Republic today would be on the same handout level as the six counties, and to a lesser degree Scotland and Wales.

Coogan is a gifted writer and a dogged researcher, but he is not, has never been and will never be an objective historian of the Irish Troubles, unlike such writers as Peter Taylor and the late J. Bowyer Bell.

External link

• [2] THE GREEN BOOK — chapter from The IRA, Coogan's book on the Irish Republican Army