Tapping the keys on a keyboard is one thing – I’m a two-fingered typist like most people these days – but when the words you put together end up being completely controversial and freak some people out in the process, it’s quite a different story. Okay, it’s only history that I usually write about but you try telling that to the readers who will be majorly ticked off with my latest literary offering.

Feelings about Old Ironsides (Oliver Cromwell, not Raymond Burr) still run very high in Ireland. He is still the ultimate bogeyman of Irish history. This is my third book about him. Cromwell at Drogheda came out in 1993, Cromwell, An Honourable Enemy appeared in 1999, and now…brace yourselves…here comes Cromwell was Framed.

To sum up what this new version of Cromwell means to the majority of Irish people, a recent Chronos Books Press Release stimulated a one word response ‘Bulls**t!’ from a discerning reviewer. It’s doubtful that he/she will want to see the book because obviously for him/her it’s utter nonsense. That’s fine of course, because everybody is entitled to their opinion. But it would be better if they had read the book before commenting, don’t you think?

At one point in my life I was a full-time journalist for the local rag with a weekly column to boot. It ran for nine years and I loved the challenge of coming up with a different theme every week. My objective was never to write inane humdrum stories about myself and my banal life. Who wants to know about that?! So instead I wrote about everything and anything, religion, death, football, childhood, my insurance man, milkman, nostalgia, puns, spoonerisms, malapropisms, and whatever ism you’re having yourself. The difference was that I rarely annoyed anybody. (Actually that’s not true. I once wrote a column about how much I hate GAA – it’s an Irish thing – and I was lambasted from a height. I do hate GAA. I blame the Christian Brothers  who beat it into us when we were nippers. So what’s wrong with that? I also hate shamrocks, shillelaghs and cabbage. So sue me. )

So I rarely got peoples’ backs up with my writing. This new book will definitely get people’s backs up – and their fronts and many of their sides as well. But I don’t really give a monkey’s. It’s the truth. We’ve been spun lies for years. The historians are wrong. No question. Some academics tried to dismiss my last book about Cromwell but I have now hauled each and every one of them (my major detractors) over hot coals in this new book. They’re wrong. I’m right. You historians should be ashamed of yourselves. Trying to perpetuate and cling onto ancient and dated myths. How very dare you! Cromwell was an all right bloke. So get over it! This stops now! Let me be the first to say sorry to Cromwell for blackening his name over the centuries. Sorry Ollie.

Hmm. I wonder if I could I organise a delegation to go to Huntingdon, Cromwell’s hometown and apologise to any family members that might still be around…

I have no idea how I could ever annoy anyone with my incredibly subtle and extremely restrained words.  I’m shocked that people would ever think such a thing!

Tom Reilly

 

 

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