All The Dead Voices by Danny Morrison

Usually, when I review a book, it is very much a case of first impressions.

However, this one is an old friend —a brilliant memoir by Danny Morrison, first published in 2002.

It is now updated with extra chapters.

Full disclosure, I don’t come to this book or the author as an objectively minded reviewer.

Danny Morrison has been my friend and comrade for more decades than I can think.

Re-reading the chapter on Harry White (Danny’s uncle) from the original edition further convinced me that if ever there was a bio-pic in waiting, it’s about that resourceful and determined Republican.

Harry was Danny’s mother’s older brother.

He was sentenced to death in 1946 for the killing of Special Branch man George Mordaunt in 1942.

His sentence was reduced to twelve years in prison.

He was released in 1948 after a change of government.

White had been on IRA operations in England and then returned to train other Volunteers in the use of explosives, Brendan Behan being among his pupils.

Republican activists who become writers have a long history.

I whooped with delight when Danny reproduced my favourite lines from Behan’s utterly brilliant “Borstal Boy”.

Friday, in the evening, the landlady shouted up the stairs: “Oh God, oh Jesus, oh Sacred Heart, Boy, there’s two gentlemen here to see you.”

I knew by the screeches of her that the gentlemen were not calling to inquire after my health, or to see if I’d had a good trip.

I grabbed my suitcase, containing Pot. Chlor., Sulph Ac, gelignite, detonators, electrical and ignition, and the rest of my Sinn Fein conjurer’s outfit, and carried it to the window.

Then the gentlemen arrived. A young one, with a blond Herrenvolk head and a BBC accent shouted “I say, grab him the behstud!” 

It was the “Forties Men”, like Harry White and Joe Cahill, who were on hand to guide and teach Danny’s generation, who were enjoying the Swinging Sixties, when the Irish Partition problem exploded onto the streets of Belfast and Derry.

They had a historically grounded analysis, and they knew that revolution wasn’t a parlour game for dilettantes sitting in universities.

As this is an updated edition, some chapters are revisited by the author.

I found the postscript to the chapter “Once a Volunteer” especially significant.

Revolutions happen to real people with real lives and real loves.

Finding out that in his new wife’s family (Danny’s brother-in-law’s twin) was a Brit who had worked as a dog handler at Long Kesh while Danny was interned is too bizarrely contrived for a novel.

It was after the first IRA cessation in 1994 that Danny decided to become a full-time writer.

He suggested that I would appreciate one of the new chapters, Santiago Pilgrimage.

He wasn’t wrong.

Like the Camino itself, it’s a physical journey and a reflective internal monologue worthy of a novel.

Danny, a keen cyclist, pedalled the ancient Iberian route in 2024.

Your humble correspondent plodded through the same journey in 2010.

When he knew I was about to review the book, Danny pointed me to that chapter in particular, suggesting I might enjoy it.

Understatement alert incoming!

I reminded Danny that one of the central characters in my novel, The Squad, met his wife on Camino de Santiago after he had resigned from the IRA.

In that chapter, he offered an observation that stuck with me for days.

Whether it be a memoir, a play, or a novel, the writer ransacks their memories.

That is why Morrison’s novels are authentic from the introduction to the denouement.

There are a few rules in creative writing, but the best advice is to “write about what you know”.

That’s why his novel The Wrong Man, a story of an IRA Active Service Unit searching for the traitor in their ranks, brilliantly evokes that claustrophobic, paranoid world.

He examines the tout’s mindset in the chapter “The Life Of A Useless Man”.

Danny juxtaposes two fictional stories from over sixty years ago, The Informer by Liam O’Flaherty and the other by Maxim Gorky, which gives the chapter its title.

Both Gypo Nolan and Yevsey Klimkov are complicated, conflicted, but in the end totally worthless individuals.

I’ve always gravitated towards memoirs, as they give a ground-level human texture that is often lacking in the broad sweeps that are the historian’s stock-in-trade.

In the age of Chat Shite GBT, the authentic work of an author, speaking in their unique voice, formed by the collage of a myriad human experiences, is a gem to be treasured.

AI can synthesise it, but can’t recall an emotion as the words emerge and change.

All the Dead Voices is dedicated to the memory of Danny’s sister, Susan, whom he calls “the angel of our family”.

The book is available  at the following outlets, signed by the author:

 

An Fhuiseog/The Lark Store, 51/53 Falls Road, Belfast – www.thelarkstore.ie

 

Sinn Féin Bookshop, 58 Parnell Square, Dublin – www.sinnfeinbookshop.com

 

An Ceathrú Póilí, An Chulturlann, 216 Falls Road, Belfast – www.anceathrupoili.com/en

 

Also online from Sinn Féin.

 

Highly recommended.