Sam McBride Northern Ireland Editor
  • Belfast
  • Belfast Telegraph

Sam McBride is the Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Independent. His 2019 book Burned: The Inside Story of the Cash-for-Ash Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite became a Sunday Times and Irish Times bestseller and was shortlisted for the Christopher Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize. He is a regular presence on radio and television, giving analysis of events which impact on Northern Irish politics and society.

Published In

Belfast Telegraph, Sunday Independent

Focus Areas

  • Northern Ireland

840 Articles
15 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Stormont’s shambolic politicking as people died led Chief Medical Officer to despair of ‘dysfunct...

Northern Ireland's chief medical officer referred to Executive ministers as "dysfunctional b******s", it has emerged,...

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16 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

How Orange Order’s plan for a neck tie with crown motif was undone by the Queen

Just a few years before the Troubles began, the Home Office knew so little about the Orange Order that it resorted to...

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17 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

How a stranger’s unexpected words imparted wisdom from beyond the grave

Life’s many coincidences lead us down unexpected paths. One day recently my wife came into the kitchen where I was li...

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18 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

It would be a scandal if Jeffrey Donaldson’s trial collapsed due to the justice system’s failure

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson’s trial is a monumental challenge for the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland.

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22 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Army’s concern at RUC getting a bigger covert operations role

A secret Army paper in 1984 expressed concern the RUC might get more involved in “the mucky end” of intelligence-gath...

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23 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Kew Files: Adams and McGuinness separately said IRA had been wrong not to decommission earlier

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were in Dublin to meet US President George W ...

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24 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

The Kingsmill massacre: A squeeze of the hand on a cold winter’s night shows hope was always there

Imagine you are driving down a dark country road on a winter evening when you are stopped by armed men blocking the r...

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25 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Inside IRA decommissioning: US spy satellites, Adams criticising the IRA, and inspections in dark...

Ever since the IRA’s historic decommissioning of weapons, the process which saw arms destroyed has been clothed in ac...

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27 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Informant was paid equivalent of £55k for info which saw ‘notorious IRA gang’ arrested

The largest single payment to an informant in Northern Ireland during the first 13 years of the Troubles was £15,000 ...

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28 days ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

SF lobbied for return of on the run IRA man later killed by his former comrades

Sinn Féin pressed to get on the run Provo Kevin McGuigan back into Northern Ireland in 2000 — 15 years before the IRA...

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about 1 month ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Tony Blair’s Government wanted an amnesty only for terrorists, with soldiers and police excluded,...

Long before the government legislated to give an amnesty for all Troubles crimes, its own files show it had been warn...

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about 1 month ago
belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Sinn Féin’s track record on housing in Northern Ireland is nothing to write home about

Parties seeking power make extravagant promises. When voters consider a party that has never previously been in a cou...

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