Times of Troubles: Britain's War in Northern Ireland is a narrative history of Operation Banner—the British army's operations in Northern Ireland during the Troubles, from 1969 to 2007—based on oral history interviews as well as published sources. Its organization is thematic, with its nine chapters concentrating on either a region of Northern Ireland or some aspect of the Troubles themselves. The book's first three chapters, for example, discuss the conflict in Belfast. Chapter 1 concentrates on events in July 1970—especially the Falls Road Curfew, which alienated Catholics and allowed the Provisional Irish Republican Army (IRA) to present itself as this community's defenders. Chapter 2, by contrast, includes a discussion of the slaying of three unarmed Royal Highland Fusiliers in March 1971. The remainder of the chapter chronicles the conflict in the city between 1970 and 1972, with an emphasis on both IRA tactics and the development of the army's countertactics.

Chapter 3 then surveys the remaining years of the Troubles in Belfast. After discussing the Ulster Workers' Council strike in 1974, it fast-forwards to the 1980s: this new phase of the conflict began with the hunger strike by IRA prisoners in 1981 and reached a gruesome climax in 1988, when the murder of three people by a loyalist gunman at Milltown Cemetery was followed within three days by the killing of two British army corporals at the funeral for one of the gunman's victims. The violence then declined throughout the 1990s, until the Belfast Peace Agreement was signed in 1998.

Chapter 4 covers events in Derry/Londonderry, noting that while the conflict there was an important cause of the Troubles, it was not central to the Troubles themselves. Its account of Bloody Sunday on 30 January 1972 is rather sketchy, but its discussion of Operation Motorman, carried out in July when the British army reoccupied the city's “no-go” areas, is much better. After 1972, Derry/Londonderry was less violent than Belfast: loyalist paramilitaries were much less active in the predominantly nationalist city, and the IRA's campaign wound down earlier there than it did elsewhere.

Chapter 5, by contrast, begins with a detailed description of the Warrenpoint Ambush of August 1979, in which two IRA bombs killed eighteen British soldiers. It then discusses the strategic and tactical problems posed by operations in rural border districts like South Armagh, where the IRA could attack soldiers and police, then escape to safety in the Republic of Ireland. In some cases, even the command wires for roadside bombs ran across the border. Watchtowers constructed in the 1980s remained in place for years after the Belfast Agreement was signed—highly visible reminders of the intensity of the conflict in this region.

The next two chapters discuss cases where soldiers used excessive force. The authors argue that many complaints of military brutality were exaggerated, but they concede that there was indeed some fire behind the smoke—especially in the early 1970s. The rules of engagement embodied in the Yellow Card were not always clear, and investigations by the Military Police were often cursory, creating a harmful and lasting impression that soldiers were above the law. Even later, when killings were investigated by the Royal Ulster Constabulary, it was difficult to convict soldiers of murder: this becomes clear in chapter 7, when the authors discuss a number of cases that went to trial, including the stabbing murder of two civilians by soldiers of the Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders in October 1972.

Chapter 8 covers “The Secret War”—intelligence gathering and covert operations by units like 14 Intelligence Company and the Special Air Service. Though it surveys the whole conflict, the narrative pays particular attention to events in the late 1980s, like the Loughgall Ambush in East Tyrone in 1987 and Operation Flavius in Gibraltar in 1988. The authors dismiss what they call “the popular myth of a British shoot-to-kill campaign” (226). Similarly, while it was “relatively common for soldiers to pass information on republicans to loyalists” (229), the authors argue that actual collusion between the army and loyalist paramilitaries was unusual: otherwise, “the IRA's death toll during the conflict would surely have been infinitely greater than it was” (231).

The authors return to this theme in chapter 9, when they conclude that, while neither side really won, “the army and police had far more cause to claim victory than the IRA ever had” (254). Strikingly, the authors argue that, far from defending Northern Ireland's nationalist community, the IRA's armed struggle actually put this community at risk. “Over one thousand Catholic civilians died during the troubles,” they note: three-fifths of them were murdered by loyalists, but “nearly one-fifth died at the hands of the IRA themselves” (250). The British security forces, they conclude, actually did a much better job of defending Catholic civilians from loyalist death squads than the IRA ever did.

Times of Troubles is a readable and valuable book—an important contribution to the history of the British army in Northern Ireland. As we might expect from Edinburgh University Press, its discussion of Scottish troops and their experiences is particularly good. The book does, however, suffer from a number of structural problems. The introduction does not serve its purpose, providing neither a thesis statement nor an overview of the book's contents. Similarly, the book's conclusions, in chapter 9, are sandwiched between a brief narrative of events after 1998 and an even briefer discussion of posttraumatic stress among soldiers who served in Northern Ireland. While always engaging, the book lacks focus and assumes a great deal of knowledge on the part of the reader. The authors also make a number of interesting and even provocative arguments, without proving them conclusively. (Their account of Bloody Sunday, in which they raise doubts about the findings of the Saville Inquiry, is a particularly egregious example of this.) As a result, Times of Troubles should not be anyone's first book on the subject, but readers who already know something about the history of the Northern Irish conflict will find it both informative and thought provoking.