The Orange Order : A Tradition Betrayed

As Orangemen marched in the summer of 2005, Protestant paramilitaries fired on army and police in the worst street riots seen in Belfast for 10 years.

Northern Ireland's Chief Constable squarely blamed the Orange Order.

Published to coincide with the start of the 2006 marching season, this extraordinary book opens the lid on this secretive, powerful and beleaguered organisation whose future is inextricably tied to that of the United Kingdom itself.

Today, the Order has around 30,000 active members, increasingly identified with an unyielding, bigoted Unionism - Ian Paisley joined at the age of 21 - expressed in the thousands of marches it stages each year, all too often the flashpoint for violence. Orangeism, like Unionism, is at a crossroads, and a long way from the peaceful tolerance it preaches.

This remarkable book takes the lid off a secret society that has lost its moral direction, but not its capacity for intrigue, influence or coercion.

Written more in sorrow than in anger but with absolute authority, the result is a revelatory volume to stand comparison for its personal bravery and political importance.