Reporting the Troubles 2

More journalists tell their stories of the Northern Ireland conflict

Deric Henderson, Ivan Little

• Publisher: Blackstaff Press Ltd
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9781780733265
• Edition: 0
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Media & Communications Industry
• Index: Literature

In this follow-up to their landmark first book, Deric Henderson and Ivan Little have gathered new stories from seventy journalists who have worked in Northern Ireland during the Troubles. These contributors write powerfully about the victims they have never forgotten, the events that have never left them, and the lasting impact of working through those terrible years.

Reporting the Troubles 2, which includes contributions from a new generation of journalists, who came up in the years leading to the Good Friday Agreement, provides a compelling narrative of the last fifty years, and covers many of the key events in Northern Ireland's troubled history, from Bloody Sunday in 1972 to the inquest into the Ballymurphy Massacre in 2021.

Grounded in the passionate belief that good journalism and good journalists make a difference, Reporting the Troubles 2 is a profoundly moving act of remembrance and testimony.

'I am sometimes asked to identify the most important story that I dealt with while I was editor of the Irish Times … I answer that the most important story was not published in a single day but over years. And it was not put together by any one journalist but by a whole cohort of reporters, photographers, feature writers and editors … For the most part they just got by-lines and the satisfaction of knowing that what they were doing was important, that the story had to be told, day by day, hour by hour. And that telling it could make a difference. It is difficult to imagine that there could ever have been a peace process without that.'

CONOR BRADY, former editor, Irish Times

Contributions from -

Gordon Adair, Don Anderson, Ciaran Barnes, Colin Bateman, Jilly Beattie, Charlie Bird, David Blevins, Declan Bogue, Conor Brady, Stephen Breen, Eugene Campbell, Peter Cardwell, Mark Carruthers, Niall Carson, Paddy Clancy, Simon Cole, Liam Collins, Mark Davey, Donna Deeney, Michael Denieffe, Patricia Devlin, Michael Donnelly, Roisín Duffy, Gavin Esler, Michael Fisher, Jim Flanagan, Mike Gaston, Gareth Gordon, Jim Gracey, Paul Harris, Deric Henderson, Mark Hennessy, Gary Honeyford, Paul Johnson, Fergal Keane, Vincent Kearney, Gerry Kelly, Will Leitch, Ivan Little, Robin Livingstone, David Lynas, Darragh MacIntyre, Michael Macmillan, Kevin Magee, Stanley Matchett, Don McAleer, Roisin McAuley, Barry McCaffrey, Jonny McCambridge, Freya McClements, Sir Trevor McDonald, Lindy McDowell, Mark McFadden, Hugh McGrattan, Seamus McKee, Fearghal McKinney, Allison Morris, Rod Nawn, Malachi O'Doherty, Maggie O'Kane, Mike Parry, Lance Price, Colin Randall, Paul Reynolds, Maggie Taggart, Eric Villiers, John Ware, Nicholas Watt, Johnny Watterson, David Young.

Table of contents

• Dedication
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• The town we didn’t know so well
• How bombs stopped play during rooftop cricket matches
• Fighting the print industry’s sectarian saboteurs
• The Bloody Sunday line I wish I had not filed
• How my picture became Bloody Sunday’s iconic image
• The black-and-white print from 1972 that caught up with me
• The day I asked the IRA, ‘What the fuck was that all about?’
• Deadly secrets stashed in a wardrobe
• How the Troubles shattered the ‘quiet’ of the North Coast
• The strike that set Northern Ireland apart
• The phenomenon that was the Peace People
• The priceless Penny Marvel
• Nairac – a collision of myths in a dark field
• Remembering Lesley Gordon
• My breakneck journey to report Mountbatten’s murder
• Football’s night of shame
• The gangster and the peacemaker who lived streets apart
• Jumping on the bonnets of upturned cars
• The one thing we learn from history is that we don’t learn from history
• The killing of Sean Downes
• Covering paramilitary funerals
• The Mafia, the IRA, Johnny Depp and me
• Jimmy Graham: a man I never met but cannot forget
• An Englishman in New Lodge
• All around was chaos
• Seared into my mind forever
• How Gordon Wilson moved me, and the country, to tears
• The army killing of GAA player Aidan McAnespie
• Twists and turns, patterns and connections
• For me, the story of the Troubles is told in silence
• The inquest on the Rock
• Too close for comfort – standing by a 1000lb bomb
• Kelly
• The tiny white coffin that made me ashamed of my homeland
• We didn’t emote because that would get in the way of the work
• How a bomb ended my journalism career
• A war hero murdered by loyalist cowards
• A chilling car journey with ‘Mad Dog’ Adair
• ‘We need help to speak again’
• Early signs of the pillars that underpinned the peace process
• My neighbour John Hume
• Rule 5: tell your story
• ‘All their songs are sad’
• Persistence mixed with luck
• ‘I love you …’ ‘Love you right back.’
• Lives left in despair by political failure
• Silence like no other
• The impact of GCHQ’s chokehold on the investigation into the Omagh bombing
• Familiar faces in Downing Street
• How the Troubles caught up with me in the Florida sunshine
• Court reporting and the murder that made me question everything
• A father’s quest to find out the truth about his son’s murder
• Crossing paths with Michael Stone, Northern Ireland’s most notorious loyalist gunman
• Clandestine meetings with the ‘park walker’
• Holy Cross – why was it allowed to happen?
• Still agonising about a front-page story
• Face to face with Freddie Scappaticci
• Thomas Devlin: his family’s fight for justice and the trust that keeps his memory alive
• ‘We don’t want to go back to this’
• I’ll never forget the Queen’s visit to the Garden of Remembrance
• The night my luck ran out
• Continuing violence, north and south of the border
• Ready to tell their story: survivors revisit the horror of the Ballygawley bus bombing
• Lyra
• ‘I want the world to know my Philip’s name’: remembering the children who were killed in the Troubles
• Terrorist threats
• How the storming of the Capitol reminded me of Drumcree
• Too close
• Keeping the peace in the TV studio
• The Ballymurphy Inquest – and the meaning of legacy
• Acknowledgements
• Picture Section