Darragh macintyre biography of martin

Left to right, Martin McGuinness, David O'Connell, Sean MacStiofain and Seamus Twomey of the Provisional IRA in June

(Image credit: Staff / Mirrorpix / Getty Images)

A new BBC documentary tells how in the Irish Republican Army (IRA) allowed an American TV crew to film the inner workings of "Europe’s deadliest guerrilla force".

It's "The Troubles meets a Tom Clancy novel", wrote Ed Power in The Irish Times.

The background

In , during the "darkest days of the conflict in the North [of Ireland]", John Bowyer Bell, an American academic sympathetic to the IRA, persuaded its leadership to allow him to film its "bloody campaign from the inside, for a project he titled 'The Secret Army'", said Power.