A curious journey that is yet to be completed.

If you’re in Béal Feirste tomorrow, then get yourself along to this one.

Yet again, Féile an Phobail delivers big for a very special city.

This is a book that deserves to be read and re-read.

The testimony of those Tan War veterans, like General Tom Barry of West Cork fame, could have been lost in an Ireland where revisionism was on full throttle.

It was the era of Section 31

I bought Curious Journey when it was first published in 1982.

My grandmother, a stalwart of Cumann na mBan, had passed the previous year.

Looking back now, I realise that I was still processing my grief, knowing that I would never again sit at her fireside in Mayo and hear about those days.

I knew that she was a great admirer of the exploits of the West Cork Flying Column under Barry.

Fifty years after the Rising in 1966, the pair of them proudly remembered why they had to fight the Brits.

History forgotten is a betrayal.

History remembered is a weapon.

I remember the day this book was handed to me in a house in New Lodge Road.

As I recall, I read it in one sitting and determined to get my own copy.

I sat on a battered old couch and let the stories from a dying generation of Republican activists speak to me.

Outside the window, a slate grey RUC armoured Land Rover cautiously slithered along Upper Meadow Street.

For a moment, I wondered how the hero of Kilmichael would have dealt with that detachment of Crown Forces in an Irish city.

Rather ironically, the Belfast man who lent me his copy of Curious Journey was, like Barry, an ex-British soldier.

He had also been politicised by events in his corner of this island.

Forty years on, the testimony of  General Tom Barry, Maire Comerford and Brighid Lyons Thornton remains relevant for a new generation.

Even today, many in the Dublin political elite would pretend that Ireland under British rule wasn’t all that bad.

They cannot face the fact that my grandparent’s generation was entirely justified in taking up arms.

In many ways, they didn’t really have a choice.

That’s an uncomfortable truth for many who are still in the Section 31 mindset.

The confected furore directed against Michelle O’Neill for her recent comments about the justification for the Northern War is part of the same Orwellian narrative.

I’m glad that Curious Journey has been updated and re-issued.

Soon I’ll have two copies.