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How Say Nothing’s Characters Compare to Their Real Life Counterparts


A closer look at where and how FX’s new adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s nonfiction book veers into fiction.

The series’ sixth and best episode focuses exclusively on the Price sisters’ imprisonment at HMP Brixton and the hunger strike they maintained for 206 days in a harrowing, ultimately successful effort to shame the British government into granting their request to be moved to a prison in Northern Ireland. British intelligence expert Frank Kitson deployed several field agents in an ice cream van roaming the streets of West Belfast to surreptitiously film people out and about in the neighborhood, then softened up one of Brendan’s men to the point that he identified everyone in D Company, allowing the Army to find and attempt to capture Hughes. Keefe’s book carefully addresses Adams’ gradual conviction that the armed struggle and political change would be equally significant aspects of the quest for a peaceful and reunited Ireland, while noting that his “refusal to acknowledge that he was ever in the IRA” contributed to “a queasy sense of irresolution” even after the passage of the Good Friday Agreement.

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