Heiress, Rebel, Vigilante, Bomber: The Extraordinary Life of Rose Dugdale

Irish journalist and lawyer O’Driscoll (The Accidental Spy) writes in this rigorous biography that English aristocrat–turned–Irish revolutionary Rose Dugdale has two sides: “extraordinarily generous and... disturbingly brutal.” Born in 1941 to a millionaire underwriter for Lloyd’s of London, Dugdale was a reluctant debutante in 1958. She left home to attend Oxford University, and received a doctorate in economics from the University of London. The global left-wing protests of 1968 shaped her views, leading her to volunteer for the Irish Republican Army and eventually become a bomb-maker. After taking part in an IRA raid to steal valuable art from an Irish mansion (in hopes of bartering the art for the freedom of incarcerated IRA members), she was sentenced to nine years in prison. After her release, she found purpose as an anti-drug crusader in Dublin, where she still lives. Drawing on interviews with Dugdale and her colleagues, O’Driscoll captures his subject’s complexities (Dugdale “[exuded] the energy of someone who was very kind to children, to animals and to the poor, but... showed little empathy for anyone she regarded as being on the wrong side of class politics”) and gives a thorough behind-the-scenes report of the era’s radical political milieu and its operational procedures (bomb-making gets a detailed treatment). The result is an engrossing window into the history of the Troubles. (Jan.)