| Bookshelf: Hell of an experience
Rí-rá looks at Co. Monoghan businessman Colin Martin’s
account of his harrowing time spent in Thailand. He is swindled out of
money, accused of murder and spends eight years in the infamous Bangkok
Hilton prison.
 It is probably true
to say that there is no country in the world in which corruption, injustice,
violence, oppression and sexual deviance are not present to some extent.
In Colin Martin’s account of his time in Bangkok, however, all of
these evils are practised to extraordinary degrees and with the connivance
of the state authorities.
Martin, originally from Co. Monaghan, works as a successful businessman
in Holland when he sees an advert from a firm in Thailand who need just
the type of specialist construction workforce he could supply. He travels
to Bangkok and meets O’Connor, who demands a deposit of close to
$500 000 to set-up a lucrative contract. Things predictably go from bad
to worse as Martin despite his innate caution is swindled out of the money,
as are several of his workers who were obliged to put up bonds to work
on the fictitious scheme.
Having spent two years tracking down the elusive conman, Martin has the
tables turned on him when he is accused of murdering O’Connor’s
bodyguard. The police want a conviction and despite a total lack of evidence
— including the body — Martin finds himself arrested, shackled
and thrown into the infamous Chonburi Prison, the Bangkok Hilton.
Martin’s account of the next eight years is harrowing in the extreme.
Every evil known to man is practised in the prison, both among the inmates
and to an even greater extent by the sadistic and venal guards.
 Perhaps the
most horrifying passage occurs when he contracts TB and ends up in the
prison hospital, only to find that cruelty, greed and violence exist here
on an even greater scale. The institutional corruption and savagery in
both prison and hospital seem almost beyond belief, yet Martin concludes
that the worst vice is the utter indifference of the authorities and the
guards to the suffering of the prisoners.
Faced with the illogical, infuriatingly blank wall of the Thai justice
system, Martin fights on to prove his innocence, facing defeat and crushing
disappointment at every turn. The guilty verdict, achieved without evidence
or witnesses, stands to this day.
Welcome To Hell is not an easy read but it is a compulsive one. Martin’s
story is a testimony to his indomitable spirit. His grim humour and adaptability
to his conditions provide shafts of light in a dark tale and an inspiration
to anyone who has suffered injustice.
David Silver
Welcome To Hell by Colin Martin is published by Maverick House.
Des O’Driscoll
Irish Examiner 100 Years Of News
 The
Irish Examiner 100 Years Of News is a unique presentation of events in
Ireland and elsewhere during a remarkable and crowded century. Published
to celebrate the designation of Cork as European Capital of Culture in
2005 it provides a special perspective on life in Ireland during the previous
100 years.
Taken directly from the archives of the Irish Examiner are news stories
and features exactly as they appeared together with contemporary photographs
— many in colour. Reproductions of pages from the paper provide
wonderfully evocative reminders of events, both great and small, and of
lifestyles from the past.
History lives again on these pages: Micheal Collins, John F Kennedy, Osama
Bin Laden, the Civil War, two World Wars. There is also sport and entertainment:
Christy Ring, Stephen Roche, Shergar, Roy Keane, Gay Byrne, JR Ewing.
Coverage of major disasters is graphic and moving: The last pictures and
reports from the Titanic as she steamed from Queenstown in 1912; the award
winning coverage of the Air India tragedy in 1986.
And of course there are politics — national and local — literature,
arts, fashion, indeed the whole range of life in Ireland and abroad as
seen through the eyes of generations of writers and photographers of Ireland’s
oldest newspaper and the only national daily published outside Dublin.
Irish Examiner 100 Years Of News is a celebration not only of a century
but also of one newspaper’s role in reporting it.
A native of Cork, Des O’Driscoll is a freelance journalist who has
worked with the Irish Examiner as a feature-writer, sub-editor and librarian.
Johnny Rogan
Van Morrison: No Surrender
 Reclusive,
difficult and enigmatic, Van Morrison is a gifted singer-songwriter and
an endlessly complicated man. In Van Morrisson: No Surrender Johnny Rogan
has produced a provocative and revelatory biography of the musician, analysing
the sense of place in his work and the torturous journey that took him
from local fame in Belfast to international success as one of the most
respected and acclaimed figures in contemporary popular music.
Set against the cultural and political backdrop of Belfast, before, during
and after the Troubles, No Surrender offers a unique and penetrating perspective
on Morrison’s long career and the times that made him.
Morrison grew up in Belfast at the time of an explosion in youth culture
and theemergence of a beat scene second only to Liverpool, a vibrant period
before the descent into sectarian conflict. He was an unlikely star and
a publicist’s nightmare: Short with plain looks, he gave fractious
interviews, challenged his fellow musicians, producers and management
and stubbornly went his own way. For Morrison, whose personality seemed
to typify the No Surrender Unionist mentality, such conflicts paved the
way for a new beginning. It was this uncompromising attitude that ultimately
secured his reputation among the greats of his era.
After a period of success in Belfast and chart success with group Them
he moved to America and recorded the ground-breaking Astral Weeks, a work
requently nominated as one of the best albums of all time. Further albums
such as Moondance, Tupelo Honey and Veedon Fleece confirmed his standing
among the rock elite of the ’70s. Morrison subsequently returned
to Britain to reinvent himself once more with a series of albums of meditative
music including the best-selling Avalon Sunset.
Over the last five decades his music has embraced rock, folk, blues, country
and jazz and he remains a hugely influential figure. This definitive study,
the product of years of research with scores of new interviews from every
stage of his career is a compelling account of a modern music myth.
Johnny Rogan has written many books, including highly-acclaimed music
biographies and studies of the Byrds, Neil Young, the Kinks, John Lennon,
Roxy Music, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young and The Smiths. His controversial
Morrissey & Marr: The Severed Alliance became a best-seller, and Starmakers
& Svengalis, a history of British pop management, was adapted by the
BBC.
SinÉad De Valera
The Enchanted Lake
 Ireland has
a rich tradition of fairy stories and supernatural lore. Such is the collection
of De Valera’s the Enchanted Lake.
Her Classic Irish Fairy Stories gathers together eight tales of magic
spells and potions, princes and princesses, wicked giants and hags.
In olden times there lived... familiar words which begin this collection.
For generations Sinéad de Valeratales have captured the imagination
of young and old alike. This new collection, brings to light a world of
magical characters guaranteed to charm and entertain.
First, there is the story of Nessa, the beautiful daughter of a chieftain,
who is held captive by an evil serpent. Three brothers vie for a beautiful
wife, but only one proves that he is worthy in The Three Drinks. The ugly
witch who was really a beautiful princess is saved by a kind young man
in The Hare of Sleevebawn. And the broken hearts of two mothers are healed
in the tale of The Mountain Wolf.
Sinéad de Valera was born in Balbriggan in 1879. She worked as
a national teacher and taught Irish for the Gaelic League, where she met
her husband, Eamon de Valera. She published some 30 titles, including
The Four-Leafed Shamrock, The Miser’s Gold and The Emerald Ring
and Other Irish Fairy Tales.
Noreen Mackey
The Secret Ladder
 Noreen Mackey
was a busy Irish barrister working at the European Court of Justice in
Luxembourg when she became seized by a powerful desire to leave behind
her career and family and friends for a life with an enclosed order of
nuns in the depths of the French countryside.
The Secret Ladder is an honest, absorbing true-life spiritual adventure
story that hooks the reader from the first page. It takes us inside the
hidden world of the cloister with a warm and engaging companion and guide
who writes without either sentimentality or bitterness. It is also the
story of human plans and of human failure, for during the year-and-a-half
that she spends with the community Noreen Mackey comes face-to-face with
her own dark side. Yet she discovers that it is only at the moment when
all seems lost that the quest for God truly begins.
Noreen Mackey is legal adviser to the Irish Competition Authority and
was one of the authors of the official report into the notorious tax fraud
known as the Ansbacher Affair.
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