Charles Townshend wins Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize

The 24th Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize has been won by Charles Townshend for his book The Republic: the Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923, published by Allen Lane. The winner was announced at a reception at the Irish Embassy in London, and the prize was presented by Sir Christopher Bland. The prize was set up in memory of Christopher Ewart-Biggs, British ambassador to Ireland, who was murdered by the IRA in 1976.

Reviewing the title for The Irish Times last October, Roy Foster, one of the judges for the prize, summed it up as a "magisterial and essential book", and, appropriately enough,viewed it in the context of Townshend's own career as a historian:

“In 1975 Charles Townshend’s first book, a deceptively slender volume called The British Campaign in Ireland 1919-21, set a benchmark for studies of the Irish revolution (as the events of 1912-22 were not yet called). Quarried from archival sources and employing insights from the developing genre of “war studies”, it examined the Anglo-Irish war in a new manner: laconic, sceptical, realistic and unflinching. It took the “Old IRA” seriously, in a new way.

“Since then Townshend has produced a stream of brilliant books on war in the Middle East and elsewhere, but Ireland has dominated, notably in his classic Political Violence in Ireland (1983) and his magisterial study of the Easter Rising eight years ago. His contribution to modern Irish historiography has been immense and unparalleled.

“His new book returns to the subject that first made his name, at much greater length and covering a wider span, but the Townshend trademarks are there: a beautifully crafted style, uncompromising judgments (sometimes inserted stiletto-style after an overblown quotation), erudition lightly worn and an unforced clarity throughout.”

The book was chosen by both historian Diarmaid Ferriter and novelist John Banville as one of their books of the year in The Irish Times last December. Banville wrote: "Charles Townshend is that rare phenomenon, a historian with a fine prose style. His latest study in Irish history, The Republic: The Fight for Irish Independence 1918-1923 (Allen Lane), is, like his previous account of the 1916 Rising, at once informed, comprehensive and wonderfully readable."

The other shortlisted entries were:

Feargal Cochrane, Northern Ireland: the reluctant peace (Yale University Press)

Mark Carruthers, Alternative Ulsters: conversations on identity (Liberties Press North)

Yann Demange , director of the film ’71

Jonathan Powell, Talking to Terrorists: how to end armed conflict (Bodley Head)

Theatre of Witness, Derry, for their body of work

Speaking for the judges, Foster said: “The function of this prize is to enhance understanding between people, which often involves re-examining the past on both an individual and a communal level. This year we have shortlisted a distinguished range of work which reflects this in different ways. There are two studies which illuminate how hostilities in Northern Ireland came uneasily to an end, one by a political scientist, the other by a participant in the process; a film which re-creates the experience of a British soldier marooned in the unfamiliar world of Belfast in 1971; a magisterial history of the struggle for Irish independence; a penetrating series of interviews with Ulster people, highlighting contested identities; and the work of a Derry-based theatre project which explores the experiences of people coming to terms with traumatic experiences.”

This year there was also a special award made in memory of Seamus Heaney, whose life and work did much to advance the ideals to which the prize is dedicated.