Burning Heresies

Book excerpt: In this remarkable sequel to his critically acclaimed memoir Watching the Door, Irish journalist Kevin Myers reflects on his roller-coaster career over three decades in the Irish media, from the European conflicts he reported from to the personal conflicts he fought. Fresh from the horrors of 1970s Belfast, Myers took a job in 1979 with The Irish Times, and brilliantly evokes the comical chaos of life in the smoky newsroom of Ireland’s paper-of-record. Having taken over An Irishman’s Diary, Myers single-handedly pioneered the campaign to rehabilitate the memory of the forgotten Irish soldiers of the Great War, and in the process fell foul of the paper’s editor, the legendary Douglas Gageby. His reward were plane tickets to more perilous assignments as Myers was back in the frontline of European warzones, as communism collapsed and civil wars emerged. While Myers is at his brilliant best dodging bullets on the battlefields of Tel Aviv, Beirut and Sarajevo, he also keenly and unapologetically participates in the many cultural conflicts erupting within a rapidly changing Ireland, as he opines on a broad spectrum of Irish life, covering history, politics, religion, economics, culture and society; all explored in his inimitable prose and sardonic wit. This courageously trenchant account of journalistic conflict and hubris also forensically examines his very public fall from grace in 2017, and his legal battle with RTÉ for a public apology. Burning Heresies is a candid and eye-opening must-read for anyone with even a passing interest in Irish life and current affairs.