The Andy Symington Series
One man. Three armies.
Seven years that changed everything.
Andy Symington went from the trenches of the Somme to the IRA's Second Northern Division, then into the army of the new Irish Free State. Told by the grandson who grew up with his stories and spent seven years tracing the records he left behind, this two-volume series puts one human life inside the history - with all its fear, courage, contradiction and cost.
Follow a young Tyrone man through the choices that remade Ireland, and discover what those choices demanded from him, his family and the people around him.
Kindle £7.99 · Paperback £12.99
Kindle £8.98 · Paperback £12.99
Paperback and Kindle editions. Volume Three is in preparation.
Featured in We Are Tyrone and the Tyrone Herald
Reviewed in Historical Novels Review, Issue 115
Seven years of research using family testimony, contemporary newspapers and government files
Before Tyrone hunted him, the Somme nearly broke him.
In 1916, Andy was a young Royal Irish Fusilier sent into one of the most brutal battles in history. Somme Story takes you beyond the casualty figures and into the lives of the ordinary men who endured it - the trench humour that kept them going, the failures that cost lives, and the wounds that followed Andy home.
Read it not only to understand how men survived the Somme, but to feel what survival demanded of them.
Volume One
SOMME STORY
A close, human account of comradeship, fear, military failure and shellshock - and the first act of a life that would become stranger than fiction.
Kindle £7.99 · Paperback £12.99
He survived one war. Home gave him another.
Discharged with wounds and shellshock, Andy returned to Coalisland. Within two years, the former British soldier was fighting against Britain with the IRA. The uniform changed; the danger did not. Neighbour faced neighbour. Safe houses became lifelines. Every choice could expose a family.
Irish War of Independence follows Andy and his comrades through the IRA's Second Northern Division, where the conflict did not end neatly at the Truce and the new border made every allegiance more dangerous.
Volume Two
IRISH WAR OF INDEPENDENCE
Raids, reprisals, spies, informers and the day-to-day reality of fear - told through one family's story and the overlooked northern campaign that carried the conflict into 1922.
Kindle £8.98 · Paperback £12.99
When Ireland split, every loyalty carried a cost.
The Treaty did not bring a clean ending to Tyrone and Fermanagh. As violence intensified north of the new border, Andy moved through loyalties that refuse simple labels: British soldier, IRA volunteer, then soldier of the Irish Free State.
The books do not ask you to choose a slogan or a side. They ask you to stand close enough to the people involved to understand why their choices felt possible - and what followed when they made them.
You will not just learn what happened. You will understand what it cost.
This is history experienced at ground level: through homes, streets, barracks, family memories and the decisions people made when every option carried danger.
- See the Somme and Ireland's revolutionary years through the eyes of an ordinary man, not from a distant timeline.
- Discover why the northern campaign did not end when the familiar national story says the war was over.
- Feel the pressure behind choices that are easy to judge with a century of hindsight.
- Meet people who are frightened, funny, contradictory and human - never cardboard heroes or villains.
- Finish with a fuller, messier and more memorable understanding of the forces that shaped modern Ireland.
"A read to put you through all the emotions - sadness, anger and great humour."
A promise made at eleven became seven years of research.
Tony Ferguson promised his grandfather that he would one day tell his story. After retiring in 2019, he kept that promise. He combined the memories he heard at his grandfather's knee with first-hand family testimony and a deep search through the surviving record.
The books draw on contemporary British and Irish newspapers, Bureau of Military History witness statements, Military Service Pensions Collection records, Andy's National Army service file, and Colonial Office and Ministry of Home Affairs papers held by PRONI and The National Archives.
That gives you the intimacy of a grandson's story with the substance of archival history - written to be read, felt and remembered, not filed away.
- Seven years of detailed research
- Family memory and first-hand testimony
- British and Irish newspaper archives
- Military, pension and government records
The story has moved beyond the family.
Tony's work has been reviewed, reported and discussed by organisations that care about historical storytelling and the history of Tyrone.
"Always readable and entertaining."
We Are Tyrone / Tyrone Herald
A feature on Tony and Andy described the book as bringing "to life a dark and complex chapter of Irish history."
Wat's The Story Podcast
Tony joined Jarlath Cowan to tell the story behind "Tyrone's Most Wanted Man."
Begin with the Somme. Follow him into Ireland's unfinished war.
Start with Somme Story to meet Andy before history changed his life. Continue with Irish War of Independence to see what happened when the soldier came home and found another conflict waiting.
Start with Volume One
Choose Somme Story if you want an ordinary soldier's view of the Somme, the comradeship and failures of the trenches, and the emotional wound that shaped everything that came after.
Kindle £7.99 · Paperback £12.99
Continue with Volume Two
Choose Irish War of Independence if you already know Andy's first chapter - or if your strongest interest is Tyrone, the IRA's northern campaign, partition and the conflict that continued into 1922.
Kindle £8.98 · Paperback £12.99
History is rarely tidy. It is always human.
Andy lived the contradictions. Tony recovered the record. Now the story is yours to follow.
Kindle £7.99 · Paperback £12.99
Kindle £8.98 · Paperback £12.99
These Irish history books are narrative history: researched deeply, written to be read.
VOLUME THREE — FIELD NOTES
The final volume is in preparation. Leave your email to receive occasional field notes from the research and a few free fragments before publication.
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