Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles

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The outcome of this deliberation is a book which is clear, comprehensive (within the limits of the material) and also compassionate; more compassionate, I feel, because no victim of the troubles is denied his or her moment of acknowledgement regardless of affiliation or history. The "jolting contrast" of the dialogue and imagery is noted with the "enduring beauty of the Irish landscape" set against "todays gleamingly secure pleasure palaces, built after civil war was replaced by something like peace". It is a film that weaves together high end cinematography, archive film, a commissioned score performed by the Ulster Orchestra and a number of extracts from the book, read by the very best of our acting talent. People care deeply about past events, however removed in time or geography (something that reassures me I am not in a useless profession); that depth of feeling often makes the attempt at objectivity seem harsh or clinical to the reader, just as it is extremely difficult and uncomfortable (but necessary) for the historian. The aim of the book is to provide a chronological list of all those who have died during the Troubles in Northern Ireland, either through direct violence or indirectly as a result of actions taken during this time.

For those book nerds out there who have a barcode scanner on their Christmas list, the real title of the tome in question is Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women and Children Who Died as a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles . I grew up in Belfast during the worst of the Troubles with gun battles in the street and being shot at on my way to school. Now that the Troubles seem to be over, the publication of Lost Lives is perhaps the great monument for which the bloody history of Northern Ireland has been waiting". For students of Troubles history, that means those who lost their lives since 'Lost Lives' was last printed aren't included in the print copies. It was written by Brian Feeney, Seamus Kelters, David McKittrick, David McVea and Chris Thornton and published 1999.

Ciarán Hinds lends the Rooney story new, tragic life; elsewhere, Adrian Dunbar, Susan Lynch and Kenneth Branagh sound understandably moved or appalled by the waste they describe. Michael Gallagher, who lost his son Aidan in the 1998 Omagh bombing, said the idea of reprinting Lost Lives was particularly poignant as more time passes after the Good Friday Agreement.

Despite detailing the violent deaths of thousands of people at the hands of others, the word ‘murder’ is not used in the book except where it features in quotes and legal charges brought against individuals. Documentarists Michael Hewitt and Diarmuid Lavery have come up with an immensely powerful film about a remarkable artefact: a thumping chronicle written over seven years that stands as an obituary of 3,700 lives taken during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She hasn't left the village since a traumatic stay in London as a young woman at the end of the 1980s. I didn’t feel I had any right to leave my own reactions under the circumstances, but it felt important to have paid attention, in some small measure, to the lives of others. In the era of attention-grabbing listicles, there is one list that stands the test of time, remaining as important as it is moving, as relevant as it was when first released 24 years ago.Some of you might be surprised that at this stage I am not differentiating in value between the 25 different printings of 'Lost Lives'. It turned out that Number 2555, Ronnie Finlay, aged 32, Protestant, married, 3 children, factory worker, shot by the IRA on 23 August 1983 as he left his factory, was her dad's best friend.

Compiled and presented in great detail, offering the reader a glimpse into a tragic chapter of social history that occurred on our doorstep. In dispassionate, objective prose, the authors--three journalists and an academic--record the circumstances of every death and a detail about the dead. There are parts which will shock but hopefully the film will underline the message that there mustn't be any more lives lost to the Troubles here. It comes in hardcover, was first published in 1999, and last published in revised format in 2008 by Chris Thornton (Author), Seamus Kelters (Author), Brian Feeney (Author), David McKittrick (Author).

Hewitt and Lavery wouldn’t have had to wander far into the archives for visual evidence of the taut, fraught Ireland of yesteryear, yet be warned: there are images here that couldn’t have been shown on the nightly news, interrupting the detachment instilled in the original prose. There is something so powerful about a Reference Book, something about setting criteria, making a record and aiming for completeness. This can be observed very clearly in the movement to have Libya pay compensation to the families of those killed by the weapons sold to the IRA, while the British state – which is proven to have supplied weapons in many cases to Loyalist groups, comes under no such pressure.