The intensely moving memoir of Patrick Maguire, one of the ‘Maguire Seven’, wrongly imprisoned as a teenager for making bombs for the IRA.
On the night of October 5 1974, an IRA unit left bombs in two Guildford pubs: five people were killed. On the night of December 3 1974, on the strength of fabricated testimony extracted under duress from Paul Hill and Gerard Conlon (whom the police mistakenly believed had planted the Guildford bombs), Anne and Paddy Maguire, two of their four children, Vincent and Patrick, plus other family members and friends, a total of seven in all, were arrested at their home in West London. On 22 October 1975, the Guildford Four were wrongfully convicted of bombing the two pubs in Guildford. On 4 March 1976, the Maguire Seven, as they had become known, were found guilty of possession of the nitro-glycerine used in those bombings.
On 19 October 1989, the verdicts on the Guildford Four were quashed. On 26 June 1991, the convictions against the Maguire Seven of handling explosives were quashed and just over a year later, Sir John May, after producing a report on the Maguire Seven case, described it as the worst miscarriage of justice he had ever seen.
Behind these dates lie human stories – ‘My Father's Watch’ tells that of Patrick, who was the youngest of the accused, at fourteen years old. He was sentenced to four years and when he came out he had no home and no family, as both of his parents were still in jail. This book takes us through Patrick's entire life, from his working-class childhood in West London to the difficult life he has led since prison, the roots of which go back to the wrongful convictions and the destruction of the family that followed.
Patrick Maguire and the novelist Carlo Gébler have written ‘My Father's Watch’ jointly. It is not a ghosted work – told in Patrick's own voice, it is a lucid and inspiring account of one individual's experience of an appalling injustice, as well as a reminder, as the war against terror ratchets up, of just how much harm a state can do to its own innocent citizens in the name of security.

My Father’s Watch: The Story of a Child Prisoner in 70s Britain

Maguire, Patrick

Gébler, Carlo

Humor & Entertainment

Harper-perennial

Signed by the author, "12.6.86. To Anna with warmest wishes. Carlo

August in July

Literature & Fiction

Contemporary

Hamish Hamilton

Work and Play

A portrait of Fergus Maguire whose life seems full of separate strands - a memory of Ireland, his dull job and his life in London. This book deals with a factional society whose sophistication is increasingly outstripped by its cynicism and moral cowardice. Carlo Gebler is also author of "The Eleventh Summer" (1985) and "August in July" (1986).

British & Irish

St Martins Pr

How to murder a man

All histories are really murder stories ... he who murders most, wins.Written with style and a savage grace, How To Murder A Man by Irish novelist Carlo Gébler, is a gripping portrayal of a largely untold part of Irish history. Inspired by true events, the novel follows land agent Thomas French, appointed to bring order to a decaying profitless estate in County Monaghan, Ulster, following the Great Famine.When he offers the poverty-stricken farmers free passage to America in exchange for the rights to their land, French attracts the enmity of the local Ribbonmen?a brutal and merciless secret society?who sentence the land agent to execution. A battle of wills ensues between French and Isaac Marron, the leader of the Ribbonmen, whose attempts at bloody retribution only serve to drive a divided community still further apart.The unflinching depiction of casual violence and deep-rooted prejudice has strong contemporary resonance. Gébler's lack of sensationalism in describing horrific scenes of cruelty, and his refusal to oversimplify issues, ultimately increase the impact of this story.Novelist, playwright and broadcaster Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954, the son of famous Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. A graduate of York University and the National Film and Television School, Gébler has directed a number of television documentaries and contributed articles to many prominent newspapers and magazines. He now lives in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. His other works include W9 And Other Lives, published by Marion Boyars in 1998."Gébler at his disturbing best."?The Sunday Times.

How To Murder a Man

Genre Fiction

Little, Brown, UK

Nineteenth-century Ireland was awash with secret societies, principally rural, and principally Catholic. Their function was to keep tenants on the land as they had always leased. The landlords that evicted the old tenants, and the 'land grabbers' (often Catholic) who took the new leases, were regarded as enemies. The most feared of the societies was the group known as the Ribbonmen, who enforced their ideals with brutal and horrendous practices - they castrated, tarred and feathered and even skinned their victims alive. In HOW TO MURDER A MAN, Carlo Gebler tells of a small rural community in County Monaghan, and the attempts to murder the landlord there. As in Gebler's highly acclaimed previous novel, THE CURE, it is inspired by a true story. His new novel is a fascinating glimpse of an untold part of Irish history, and traces the connections between these societies and the modern para-military groups.

ABACUS +

The story spans nearly a hundred years. In Carlo Gebler's early childhood, his relationship with his father, Ernest, was a disaster. A man of the left, Ernest's politics had been 'hammered out in the nineteen thirties'. His early life as the son of a Jewish immigrant was spent working as a rat catcher in a cinema, snatching moments alone to educate himself, but the one with the literary talent was his second wife, Edna O'Brien - Gebler's mother - who left after Ernest claimed authorship of her work. As his father saw it, Carlo and his brother Sasha were over-fed members of the bourgeoisie, and toys and sweets were banned from their lonely childhood, filled with memories of abuse and neglect. Years later, on hearing his estranged father was now senile, Gebler made the journey to southern Ireland and through his past, through diaries that confirmed Ernest's hatred for his sons, yet also revealed the abuse Ernest in turn suffered as a young man, a life of extreme poverty and the abandonment of his first wife. This not a story that ends in hate; by the time Carlo Gebler reached their final years together, he no longer felt the anger that had dogged their relationship.

Father and I

Biographies & Memoirs

Time Warner Books Uk

The Siege of Derry

History

Europe

The author recounts his three-month automobile tour of Cuba with his family as they experience the culture of a country with an unstable economy and a quality of life few people have encountered

Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters in the Land of Sugar Cane and Revolution

Travel

Caribbean

Simon&Schuster

Fergus Maguire, struggling to find meaning in the chaos of modern London, seems trapped in a dull job and a series of dead-end possibilities until his father's death spurs changes, and a girl named Jennifer walks into his life

Fireside

How To Murder A Man

All histories are really murder stories ... he who murders most, wins. Written with style and a savage grace, How To Murder A Man by Irish novelist Carlo Gébler, is a gripping portrayal of a largely untold part of Irish history. Inspired by true events, the novel follows land agent Thomas French, appointed to bring order to a decaying profitless estate in County Monaghan, Ulster, following the Great Famine. When he offers the poverty-stricken farmers free passage to America in exchange for the rights to their land, French attracts the enmity of the local Ribbonmen?a brutal and merciless secret society?who sentence the land agent to execution. A battle of wills ensues between French and Isaac Marron, the leader of the Ribbonmen, whose attempts at bloody retribution only serve to drive a divided community still further apart. The unflinching depiction of casual violence and deep-rooted prejudice has strong contemporary resonance. Gébler's lack of sensationalism in describing horrific scenes of cruelty, and his refusal to oversimplify issues, ultimately increase the impact of this story. Novelist, playwright and broadcaster Carlo Gébler was born in Dublin in 1954, the son of famous Irish novelist Edna O'Brien. A graduate of York University and the National Film and Television School, Gébler has directed a number of television documentaries and contributed articles to many prominent newspapers and magazines. He now lives in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland. His other works include W9 And Other Lives, published by Marion Boyars in 1998. "Gébler at his disturbing best."?The Sunday Times.

How to Murder a Man

Marion Boyars Publishers Ltd

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gébler, Carlo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Gébler, Carlo

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Gébler, Carlo. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

My Father’s Watch: The Story of a Child Prisoner in 70s Britain

August in July

Work and Play

How To Murder a Man

How to murder a man

Father and I

The Siege of Derry

Driving Through Cuba: Rare Encounters in the Land of Sugar Cane and Revolution

Work and Play

How to Murder a Man