Chris Moore
Marino Books, (an imprint of Mercier Press), 16 Hume St., Dublin 2, Ireland. £6.99
Chris Moore worked for the BBC in Northern Ireland during most of ‘the troubles’ and should have been ideally suited to write a decent account of Kincora and its surrounding scandals. Alas, this book is a complete turkey. It’s got no index, and no sources notes; all too frequently, where Moore does cite another source, a newspaper, for example, he gives no date. Even if it had been adequately documented, this would have been a very strange book. Kincora hardly figures in it; and of the various intelligence-related events which surrounded it there is barely a trace. Colin Wallace is mentioned once, in passing. The only positive thing that could be said is that there is a lot of (mostly unsourced) information about William McGrath and his strange organisation Tara. At various points Moore asserts that McGrath and Tara were being run by British intelligence – MI5, apparently – though it is never entirely clear, because Moore offers no evidence.
I had a chat with Harry Irwin who compiled the Kincora bibliography in Lobster 19. He found the book as disappointing and puzzling as I did.