Great Hatred : The Assassination of Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson MP

On 22 June 1922 Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson was shot dead on the doorstep of his London home, and Great Hatred tells the story of that killing. Wilson came from a Protestant gentry family in County Longford, ended the Great War as Chief of the Imperial General Staff and was elected MP for North Down in 1922.

The gunmen, Reginald Dunne and Joseph O'Sullivan, were London IRA men and First World War veterans, and both were hanged that August. In Great Hatred Ronan McGreevy tells their story from witness statements and recently released military pension files, chapters that reviewers in the British Journal for Military History and History Ireland picked out as the most original part of the book.

Reviewers note that the book ties the shooting to the start of the Irish Civil War, with the Provisional Government attacking the Four Courts days after Wilson's funeral. Who ordered the killing is left open. History Ireland's reviewer says McGreevy leans towards the view that Michael Collins ordered it, while Keith Jeffery's 2006 biography of Wilson argued the gunmen acted on their own initiative. In the London Review of Books, Niamh Gallagher noted McGreevy's view that nobody benefited from the shooting.

Views of its treatment of Wilson differ. Lord Lexden found some of its criticisms of him unduly harsh, CD Montgomery in The Critic argued it largely blames Wilson for his own death, and John M. Regan in History Ireland wanted more on his imperial views. The Business Post named it History Book of the Year, according to Trinity College Dublin's Long Room Hub. Ronan McGreevy is a journalist with The Irish Times who writes on Irish history and First World War remembrance. Library Journal said the book should appeal to general and academic readers.

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