This new year of 2022, sees us recalling all the boring aspects that marked the past couple of years as everyone lost the art of common sense, and self preservation, and most radio broadcasts were peppered with something around covid.

Ditto the newspapers.

So it was a great boost to the reading population, when Sean O’Sullivans magnificent masterpiece was launched at the library in Longford and to numerous outlets around the county, and further. 

The title is Longford’s Republican Story 1900 - 2000.

This is no ordinary book.

Indeed, it merits being described as one of the greatest historical books ever to be published in Ireland.

It defies review because no single review could possibly reflect but a slight representation of the detail, and meticulously crafted content of every page.

Another reason is that every time one turns a page it leads to so much chat about who was where when we’ve got the names and places; not conducive to conducting a review!

This book is a massive, and by necessity, heavy tome, which outlines the detail of every happening in the local IRA during the War of Independence, the Civil War, and in more modern times. 

Sean, who originated in Colmcille, and now resides in Ballinamore, Co Leitrim, has achieved an incredibly well researched record, of people, happenings, actions, and reactions, of every period in which the story can reasonably be told. 

All I can say is that this is a book where even the most avid students - young and old - of Irish history, will find lots to talk about, and remember for a long time.

The mainstream reader will enjoy it immensely too, because this is an exceptional and rewarding record of the sometimes sad, sometimes amusing, but always riveting stuff that happened long ago in Ireland. Everything contained within its pages is breathtaking. All 586 pages are lovingly composed, and oozing with information that astonishes this writer.

It must have taken many many years to accumulate all of the detail that is present, with numerous photos that are most interesting, and are reproduced within each story, on every single page. 

No such thing as throwing them all together as is the cheapest way to present a book, and it takes some steel to convince anyone involved that it must be done this way.

We can but salute Sean, for giving us such a book to treasure.