Book description
In this remarkable book, Belfast-born Derek Lundy uses the lives of
three of his ancestors as a prism through which to examine what memory
and the selective plundering of history has made of the truth in
Northern Ireland.
In Ulster the name 'Lundy' is synonymous with 'traitor'. Robert
Lundy was the Protestant governor of Londonderry in 1688, just before
it came under siege by the Catholic Irish army of James II. Robert
Lundy ordered the city's capitulation. Crying 'No Surrender', hardline
Protestants prevented it and drove him away in disgrace. William Steel
Dickson's legacy is a little different. A Presbyterian minister born
in the mid-eighteenth century, he preached with famous eloquence in
favour of using whatever means necessary to resist the tyranny of the
English. Finally there is 'Billy' Lundy, born in 1890, the embodiment
of what the Ulster Protestants had become by the beginning of World
War I - a tribe united in their hostility to Catholics and to the
concept of a united Ireland.
The lives of Robert Lundy, William Steel Dickson and Billy Lundy
encapsulate many themes in the Ulster past. In telling their stories,
Derek Lundy lays bare the harsh and murderous mythologies of Northern
Ireland and gives us a revision of its history that seems particularly
relevant in today's world.
Derek Lundy is the bestselling author of
The Way of a Ship
and
Godforsaken Sea
. He lives on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia.
