Charles Haughey – Glory, Greed and Guns review: ‘It’s still shocking to read the scale of this immorality’

Carlow-born writer Michael Farrell is best remembered for his bestselling lengthy novel Thy Tears Might Cease, published posthumously in 1963. He began writing it in the 1930s, and its prolonged gestation became the talk of literary Dublin, to the extent that during his lifetime many wondered whether its existence was a myth.

Likewise, there has been talk about Vincent Browne working on a Haughey biography for decades. Thankfully, the biography was not a myth, and it is gratifying too that Browne, veteran journalist, broadcaster and one of our great interrogators of hypocrisies, is alive, aged 82, to see it published.

It was worth the wait. The book, as long as Farrell’s 600-page novel, is absorbing, spirited, revealing and often riveting.

Nobody except Browne could have written this book, because it is not just the dramatic story of Haughey, but also about Browne’s relationship with him and the political hinterland Haughey…