Book Review: The intelligence war against the IRA by Thomas Leahy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2020, 344 + xi pp, £55 (hardback), ISBN 978 1 108 48750 4, £18.99 (paperback), ISBN 978 1 108 72040 3.

More than thirty years on from the secret opening exchanges in what would develop into the Northern Irish peace process of the 1990s, there is still no academic consensus amongst political scientists and contemporary historians with regard to the essential characteristics of the conflict (or ‘war’). This debate has spilled over into considerations of the timing of paramilitary ceasefires and the nature of the peace that has largely held since the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Thomas Leahy’s detailed and sober analysis is an important contribution to these debates. The book’s central argument, namely that the British state’s intelligence efforts did not ‘defeat’ the IRA over the course of the ‘Troubles’, will provoke scrutiny and further debate in this ongoing historical argument. One of the frustrating aspects of these debates is that what constitutes ‘defeat’ or ‘success’ with regard to paramilitary and state strategies is often left undefined. {opening paragraph]