In Ernest Blythe in Ulster: the making of a double agent? — the penultimate book of his prolific career — the late David Fitzpatrick displays all the qualities that made him a remarkable historian. He ferrets out information about Blythe (1889–1975) too easily overlooked by generations of researchers; he offers a close discussion of the social structures of communities in Ulster in which Blythe grew up and in which he lived as a young adult; and he presents the case that Blythe might simultaneously have been a member of two diametrically opposed bodies, the Irish Republican Brotherhood (I.R.B.) and the Orange Order. It was this last element that gave the book its interrogative title and that added piquancy to the life story of a man known to many for his work as the penurious (and menacing) minister for finance in the Cumann na nGaedheal governments of the 1920s, a fascist activist alongside Eoin O'Duffy in the 1930s and in support of Ailtirí na hAiséighre in the 1940s, and long-time managing director of the Abbey Theatre.

In his preface, Fitzpatrick notes that Blythe's life was deserving of a full biography, but that the more modest aim of this work was to ‘subvert Blythe's own version of his revolutionary education up to 1913’, which implied a singular direction when, in reality, his actions demonstrated the ‘astonishing duplicity, even multiplicity, of [his] conduct’ (p. viii). To make his case, the author draws heavily upon newspapers, Blythe's published Irish-language memoirs and unpublished personal papers, Bureau of Military History witness statements, the registers of the Grand Lodge of Freemasons of Ireland and the records of the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland. It is likely that only Fitzpatrick could have made the specific connections that he did because of his long career researching both the revolutionary nationalist tradition and the Orange Order.

The book's prologue — ‛Initiations’ — presents the central paradox of the work, Blythe's initiation as a member of the Orange Order in 1910, just three years after his joining the I.R.B. Fitzpatrick then offers a brief but illuminating discussion of Blythe's strong farming and mixed Episcopalian and Presbyterian family background in south-west Antrim, before turning to the middle portion of the book, subtitled ‘Disguises’. Built on the idea that Blythe rarely, if ever, allowed others to know his true mind, the author unearthed a series of poses (pseudonymous columns in newspapers, play acting in local companies and roles adopted in secret society work) through which Blythe apparently became a sort of orange-green pimpernel, learning the true minds of the men and women who would support the Ulster covenant while also considering how to radicalise the nationalists of Ireland. His real intentions in the early 1910s were, apparently, only decipherable after carefully reconstructing the contradictions between Blythe's published memoirs and public life on the one hand, and his private papers and contemporaneous materials on the other.

At the heart of the study is the brief period in Blythe's life (1909–13) when he worked as a reporter and columnist for the North Down Herald in Bangor and Newtownards, as well as a contributor to other papers including the Ulster Guardian, while simultaneously writing for the I.R.B. organ Irish Freedom. During those years, Fitzpatrick contends, his various personae argued multiple positions, some of which echoed through the decades in his later opinions about revolutionary action, partition and the logic of fascistic thought (if not outright racialised fascism). Such an argument is typical of Fitzpatrick at his most audacious, developing far-reaching conclusions based on deep reading of his sources and textual comparison. But there is a danger in this as well. For instance, readers must accept that Blythe was both ‘Purple Star’ in the Ulster Guardian and ‘The Old Town Clock’ in the North Down Herald. Fitzpatrick acknowledges at one juncture that this linkage was an ‘assumption’ because common themes appeared in both columns (p. 76), but at several other junctures he accepted statements in the latter column as coming from Blythe because they anticipated opinions he would hold decades later. While likely on the mark, such a claim remains speculative, albeit deeply informed speculation.

Students of and specialists in the first half of the twentieth century will turn to Ernest Blythe in Ulster with profit for its attention to shifting opinions in Counties Antrim and Down on the eve of the home rule crisis and for the portrait it paints of this complex and understudied founder of the Irish state. Given the central role of Blythe in later events, understanding this bridge moment in his career is vitally important, and Fitzpatrick's dogged attention to setting and text makes this a compelling read.