Chapter 3 engages with the republicans’ everyday lives in exile and the practicalities of survival in the face of persecution and multiple assassination attempts against them. The refugees had to manage language barriers and money supplies, while guarding their security and sometimes living under false identities. One of the main activities of the exiles meanwhile was gathering intelligence and information about the political situation in England and in Europe more broadly, which would help their political cause. They were aided by their personal networks and a steady supply of letters from home as well as newsletters, papers and pamphlets from a variety of sources.

The intelligence war had had minimal impact on the IRA’s campaign by June 1972. Various factors explain the limited infiltration by intelligence services of the city and rural areas where the IRA was operating at that time. In urban areas, IRA support increased following the active role played by republicans in defending nationalist areas, indiscriminate British Army actions against the nationalist community and the lack of political and socio-economic reform by Stormont and Westminster. Other factors unique to rural areas restricted intelligence, included republicans’ long-term sense of injustice at being forced into a unionist-dominated Northern Ireland state in the 1920s. British forces also conducted various indiscriminate security operations in nationalist areas, such as in County Tyrone. These operations provoked further tension. The failure to coordinate British military and RUC Special Branch intelligence on a consistent basis made containing the IRA harder. In addition, IRA barricades in Derry City and Belfast, and the ability of some rural IRA units to use the border to evade detection, meant that surveillance of the IRA via vehicle- or personality-checking systems was difficult. The intelligence war’s failure to significantly erode the IRA’s capacity for conflict partly explains why the British government talked to the IRA in June 1972.

Lamberto dell’Antella’s confession and the execution of five leading Florentines in August 1497 marked a watershed in Piero’s years of exile. Before that, Piero’s friends met in Florence to discuss plans to bring him back to Florence, with Lamberto as a go-between carrying messages to and fro. In the early years of his exile, Piero had described himself in letters to the government and to his cousins as a good citizen who only wanted to be treated fairly and allowed to return home. But after 1497 everyone was afraid of contagion and we have to rely on the reports of ambassadors, merchants and spies to discover his movements. They show how high the stakes were in a conflict that pitted the leading families of Florence against each other.