Authors

Biography · Security · Intelligence

Dr William Matchett

Former RUC / PSNI Detective Inspector with around thirty years’ service, mostly in Special Branch. After the Force years he worked internationally on counter-terrorism and police training — including programmes in Iraq and Afghanistan — and has been Adjunct Fellow / Senior Researcher at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for Conflict Prevention at Maynooth University.

Secret Victory: The Intelligence War that Beat the IRA (2016) is his insider account of Special Branch’s intelligence war. Reviewed in Quadrant by Sean O’Callaghan: “The Real Heroes of Ireland’s Dirty War”. His latest, Concrete & Steel — a biography of Frank Murray, the sort of detective many readers have never heard of — is exactly the club’s brief: serious, contested ground that is currently struggling to find a traditional publisher. Publication pathway via the club to be announced with the author.

Portrait: founder-provided (Policy Exchange appearance). See CREDITS.txt.

History · Journalism · Memoir

Kevin Myers

English-born Irish journalist; history at University College Dublin. In the 1970s he reported from Belfast for RTÉ, The Observer, and NBC. He wrote An Irishman’s Diary for The Irish Times, later columns for the Irish Independent and The Sunday Times Ireland.

Books include Watching the Door (memoir of Belfast, 1971–78), Burning Heresies (1979–2020), Ireland’s Great War, the novel Banks of Green Willow, and collections drawn from An Irishman’s Diary. He campaigned for decades for Irish remembrance of the First World War when that was still an unpopular cause.

Club angle, carefully put: a new Troubles history manuscript remains unpublished after the collapse of his newspaper career in 2017. We do not amplify the false “Holocaust denier” smear that followed; RTÉ later settled his defamation action and broadcast an apology acknowledging the claim was untrue and defamatory, and that he had long testified to the scale and wickedness of the Final Solution. Profile and title details for any club edition will be confirmed with the author before launch.

Portrait: founder-provided (broadcast still, logos trimmed). See CREDITS.txt.