Overview

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER From the bestselling, prize-winning author Linden MacIntyre comes an engrossing, page-turning exploration of the little-known life of Sir Hugh Tudor. Appointed by his friend Winston Churchill to lead the police in Ireland during the Irish War of Independence, Tudor met civil strife and domestic terrorism with indiscriminate state-sanctioned murder—changing the course of Irish history. After distinguishing himself on the battlefields of the First World War, Major-General Sir Hugh Tudor could have sought a respectable retirement in England, his duty done. But in 1920, his old friend Winston Churchill, Minister of War in Lloyd George’s cabinet, called on Tudor to serve in a very different kind of conflict—one fought in the Irish streets and countryside against an enemy determined to resist British colonial authority to the death. And soon Tudor was directing a police force waging a brutal campaign against rebel “terrorists,” one he was determined to win at all costs—including utilizing police death squads and inflicting brutal reprisals against IRA members and supporters and Sinn Féin politicians. Tudor left few traces of his time in Ireland. No diary or letters that might explain his record as commander of the notorious Black and Tans. Nothing to justify his role in Bloody Sunday, November 21, 1920, when his men infamously slaughtered Irish football fans. And why did a man knighted for his efforts in Ireland leave his family and homeland in 1925, moving across the sea to Newfoundland? Linden MacIntyre has spent four years tracking Tudor through archives, contemporaries’ diaries and letters, and the body count of that Irish war. In An Accidental Villain, he delivers a consequential and fascinating account of how events can bring a man to the point where he acts against his own training, principles and inclination in the service of a cause—and ends up on a long journey toward personal oblivion.

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9780735282025

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Reviews

""An excellent work of historical non-fiction."" —Winnipeg Free Press ""Newfoundland-born MacIntyre, one of Canada's finest investigative reporters, painstakingly researched the life of his reticent subject, scouring memoirs, diaries and official records for insights into a man who guarded his secrets. He portrays Tudor as a tragic figure who came to detest the Irish and allowed blind loyalty to Churchill and the men under his command to cloud his judgment. In one man's transition from battlefield hero to peacetime monster, the author has found ample fodder to explore whether villains are born or made."" —The Irish Times ""A formidable story of a forgotten hero of British imperialism who was a villain to those he crushed under the iron hand of the empire. Writing with a novelist’s eye, MacIntyre captures the grim civil war in Ireland in a sweeping history of violence and insurrection, reminding us of how the past continues to haunt us in the present."" —Tim Cook, author of Vimy: The Battle and The Legend ""This is a fascinating tale of a military man called Tudor, responsible for the suffering of so many in the murderous British/Irish war. He was hunted himself until his final years in self-exile in Newfoundland. Will our taste for blood never cease?"" —R.H. Thomson, author of By the Ghost Light

“A formidable story of a forgotten hero of British imperialism who was a villain to those he crushed under the iron hand of the empire. Writing with a novelist’s eye, MacIntyre captures the grim civil war in Ireland in a sweeping history of violence and insurrection, reminding us of how the past continues to haunt us in the present.” —Tim Cook, author of Vimy: The Battle and The Legend “This is a fascinating tale of a military man called Tudor, responsible for the suffering of so many in the murderous British/Irish war. He was hunted himself until his final years in self-exile in Newfoundland. Will our taste for blood never cease?” —R.H. Thomson, author of By the Ghost Light

Author Information

LINDEN MacINTYRE is the bestselling author of many award-winning books, including The Long Stretch, Causeway, The Bishop's Man, Why Men Lie, Punishment, The Only Café and The Wake. A distinguished broadcast journalist, MacIntyre was born in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland, and grew up in Port Hastings, Cape Breton. He spent twenty-four years as the co-host of The Fifth Estate and has won ten Gemini awards for his broadcast work. MacIntyre lives in Toronto with his wife, the journalist and author Carol Off. They spend their summers in a Cape Breton village by the sea.

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