Shane Ross has written a major biography of Sinn Fein leader Mary Lou McDonald, entitled A Republic Riddle. He talks on this week’s podcast about the difficulties he had in getting people to talk to him about the book and how he still considers his subject’s evolution as a political being to be something of a riddle. He also defends a central theme of his book, that Mary Lou is not fully in charge but beholden in some sense to the “hard men” who ran the IRA and still hold sway in the so-called Republican movement. Shane Ross is this week’s guest on the podcast.

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