War writing at heart is about the ambivalence of loyalty to class, nation, and friends, and of belief and the business of being human, and more recent Irish writing on the Great War, in reopening a closed chapter in our history, is no different in exploring all those ambiguities


The politics they returned to meant it is only in recent years that the stories of the Irish men and women who died – and wrote – in the Great War have been heard




Shortlisted this week for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction, Audrey Magee’s ‘The Undertaking’ has the second World War as its backdrop. Here’s a selection of our favourite literary quotations on war



A new military history of the first World War not only makes the conflict more intelligible but turns it into a gripping narrative



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