Author Colum Kenny discusses his new book ‘A Bitter Winter,’ a succinct but graphicly detailed dive into the turbulent years of the Irish civil war through the eyes of its key activists on both sides - Michael Collins, Harry Boland, Mary McSwiney and Richard Mulcahy. Reflecting on the lasting bitterness engendered by civil war, Kenny relates it to current tensions surrounding the future of Northern Ireland. Colum aims to foster an informed discussion about the foundation of the Irish state, with the civil war grasped as relevant today rather than politely skirted. The so-far limited coverage of the civil war dodges the bullet, despite its obvious relevance given Sinn Féin’s current trajectory and that party’s insistence on a border poll. Cork, like many other places throughout Ireland, suffered during the conflict that dragged on into the Spring of 1923. Kenny says, “We should be talking about such events now, because they are still relevant to politics on this island”. Colum’s book touches on the life of Seán Hales, the Co. Cork leader in the war with England who was shot and killed on his way to the Dáil. Seán Hales was pro-Treaty and fought on the opposite side of the war to his anti-treaty brother, though they’d been raised together on their Cork farm. Arrested and imprisoned during the 1916 rebellion, after his death the Cork Examiner described him as ‘the man who kept the [IRA] men together in South and West Cork, and was in many ambushes […] He was one of Michael Collins’ closest friends.’