Aoife Moore: ‘Sinn Féin have pissed a lot of people off’

The author of The Long Game on breaking through Sinn Féin's defences

Listen | 39:10
Aoife Moore, author of The Long Game, talks to Pat Leahy and Harry McGee at Electric Picnic 2023. Photograph: Declan Conlon
Aoife Moore, author of The Long Game, talks to Pat Leahy and Harry McGee at Electric Picnic 2023. Photograph: Declan Conlon

How difficult it is it to write a tell-all book about Sinn Féin, a political party known among journalists for its secrecy and its on-message discipline? Aoife Moore, author of The Long Game, a new book about the party, was expecting at least some cooperation - but it didn’t really work out that way. Of the few who were willing to talk, some had an axe to grind, she says.

In the Mindfield area at this year’s Electric Picnic festival, Aoife sat down with Pat Leahy and Harry McGee to talk about the book, the party and its major figures including Mary Lou McDonald, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams.