Richard O'Rawe is a former IRA prisoner and was Provisional IRA press officer in Long Kesh Prison in 1981. That peaceful and disciplined campaign, organised by the National H-Block/Armagh Committee, attracted on a single issue scores of thousands of people and united people of different political persuasions. Having said that, the book could have been written better as there were genuine sparks of emotional and quite beautiful prose around their deaths but most of it read almost like a history textbook.

Richard O'Rawe brings to the table in this book, the same truth and strength he brings to the table in his everyday life. A first-hand, very blunt telling of the behind the scenes and morally-fraught actions of the 1981 hunger strike in Long Kesh. I found myself frequently changing the story … maybe a character was too weak or too strong, or a particular story line wasn’t structurally right. This is an interesting book for those looking for more information about the H-Blocks and the blanketmen hunger strike(s) during that time. He has been married to Bernadette for forty years, has three grown-up children, and still lives in west Belfast.But no so in Ireland where its traditional racist attitude blinds its judgement to reason and persuasion.

In 1920 several hunger strikes (Mountjoy and Cork) were conducted by Irish Republicans demanding political status, resulting in two deaths from starvation. The blanket protest was part of a five-year protest during the Troubles by Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Irish National Liberation Army (INLA) prisoners held in the Maze prison (also known as "Long Kesh") in Northern Ireland. In mid June 1943 a form of blanket protest was carried out by Irish Republican prisoners in Crumlin Road Jail when 22 prisoners went on a "strip strike' for political status. I was talking about British government offers and how the prison leadership had accepted an offer to end the hunger strike and of how our acceptance had been overruled by an outside IRA committee. Though tempted to give up several times, I continued to the end as the subject matter was fascinating.Finance is provided by PayPal Credit (a trading name of PayPal UK Ltd, Whittaker House, Whittaker Avenue, Richmond-Upon-Thames, Surrey, United Kingdom, TW9 1EH). This document was new to the men and to the general public and was a major elaboration of how far the British government had gone in meeting the political prisoners’ five demands.

The writing is pretty dry before the narrative on the hunger strike really begins and this made it hard for me to get started at first. As prison rules required the prisoners to wear prison uniform when leaving their cells, they were confined to their cells for twenty-four hours a day. Ructions conjured up, in my mind, an individual who was a menace to society, someone who would be capable of committing murder on the one hand and showing common decency on the other. There was and is no excuse for anyone to have died in the troubles and the deaths of these ten men was a waste of their lives, but unlike many of their victims, these men had a choice. In the 1923 Irish hunger strikes thousands of Irish prisoners went on hunger strikes resulting in several deaths.Just before Christmas 2017, my daughter Berni and I were sitting in the Europa Hotel in Belfast city centre, discussing Greed, when she said: “Do you know why the London people didn’t take the book? By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. That seemed to be a bit of a Catch-22 to me: how can you become a big-named author if the publishers are not going to run with your books because you’re not a big-named author? He explains the events that led to the dirty protest - where prisoners smeared excrement over their cell walls - and on ultimately to the hunger strike. This left one censored letter in and out of the prison each month as their only contact with the outside world, until after several months some prisoners compromised by agreeing to wear uniforms for visits to maintain contact with the paramilitary leaderships outside the prison.