Background to the Research

• This book forms part of a series of autobiographical writings on Children and Conflict edited by the author. After a visit to NI, the author decided to put together the experiences of children in a region undergoing conflict.
  

Research Approach

• The author wrote to local newspapers, schools, organisations and government departments in NI in order to obtain people's essays, poems and short-stories about their childhood experiences of the Troubles. This was followed up with interviews with individuals and families, and a selection of the contributions was brought together to form the book.
  

Adrian Fox

• Adrian was born in England in 1961 and returned to NI with his parents. His father's business premises were taken over by the British army. His family were forced out of their home and the house was burned out.

Gemma McHenry

• Gemma and her family lived in Woodvale, a mixed area of Belfast where they had mainly Protestant friends. When Gemma was 10 years old a neighbour was shot twice in the stomach by a Protestant paramilitary and the family moved to the predominately Catholic Andersonstown.

Pearse Elliot

• Pearse was born and lived on the nationalist Falls Road in 1970. He states that the funeral of the hunger striker Bobby Sands had the most profound effect on him of anything in his childhood.

Robin Livingstone

• Robin recalls his family being burned out of their house in Dover Street when he was nine years old. Twelve years later his younger sister was shot dead by a British soldier.

Stephen Robinson

• Stephen works at Harland and Wolff the shipbuilders in Belfast. When he was eleven years old the top of his head was blown away by a terrorist's bullet as he walked home from school. He says he holds no bitterness towards the man who shot him and he has many friends across the sectarian divide.

Margaret Simpson

• Margaret grew up in a terrace house near the Shankill Road. She recalls in a poem an incident when she was 15 years old when a young man who had been kneecapped fell in her door looking for help.

Frank Higgins

• Frank grew up on the lower Shankill Road and recalls what it was like to grow up during the height of the Troubles, during which he lost many friends to terrorism and jail.

Jeffrey Glenn

• Jeffrey grew up in suburban Holywood and related how the bombing and shooting affected his life even though he was not directly touched by them.

Joyce Cathcart

• Joyce was brought up in the predominantly Protestant town of Ballymena and recalls what it was like when her parents became the target of paramilitaries when she was a child.

Neil Southern

• Neil conveys in his essay what it means to him and his family to have a Protestant identity and how he feels his religious and political identity is under siege.

Sharon Ingram

• Sharon grew up in Ballygawley, Co. Tyrone where her mother was a justice of the peace and her father a Church of Ireland minister. She recalls what it was like to walk the streets afraid that bombs would go off and recollects lying in the street when a bomb exploded.

Conclusions

• There were no contributions made to the book from children of British soldiers on duty in NI.
• The stories and poems contained in the book show some of the great physical, psychological and emotional damage done to children during the NI conflict.