Irelands Special Branch & The Emergency.

IRELANDS SPECIAL BRANCH

The inside story of their battle with the IRA and other groups 1922-1947

 These were just some of the ways in which the men and women of the Garda Special Branch were described by their enemies within the anti-Treaty IRA. What follows in this work is the gripping narrative of the often brutal and violent struggle for supremacy between these two sides.

It explores the foundation and the inner workings of a squad of detectives, initially called the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), based in Oriel House, Dublin, in August 1922 and their transition into what became known as the Special Branch. It further details the history of the turbulent decades which followed, and the regular confrontations with the IRA in which many officers of Ireland would make the ultimate sacrifice. 

The Emergency 
A Visual History 1939 -1945. 

In September 1939 the Second World War broke out. The fact that Ireland remained neutral in the conflict is well known. What is far less well-known is that from 1939 onwards Ireland prepared to defend itself from invasion. Combining many previously unseen photographs and documents and with a text based on research in Defence Forces and official archives, this book is an illustrated photographic and documentary history of the military and defensive preparations made by Ireland’s Defence Forces during the Second World War, what became known officially only as ‘The Emergency’.