Roseanna Doughty

‘All these books document life in Northern Ireland as it was, and is, lived. They seek out emotional interiority as well as political discourse, the private as well as the public.’

‘Hitler – Franco – Beattie’

‘The consensus was compatible with a fairly unambitious and cautious approach by the British government and didn’t present any great challenge to the argument that the conflict would ultimately be ended by defeating ‘the men of violence’.’

‘What emerges is a portrait of men who were psychopaths but they also were extreme products of a dysfunctional and collapsing society.’

‘Lost Lives to me and I think to many is more than a book, the public memorial to the dead of the Troubles that otherwise few would have had.’

‘I will therefore imagine that the target reader is an English MP with a typical level of knowledge of the problem.’

‘When I was posted to the Northern Ireland Office for what turned out to be a spell of 10 years (1988-98) I was conscious that Ireland had a good deal of history, as much a curse as a boon some said, and that I was largely ignorant of it.’

‘… it was reported to have been the most frequently stolen book from Belfast bookshops…’

‘You either give up when the blood hits the carpet or persevere until its merciless end.’

‘…the need to understand long pasts and to look simultaneously at non-state violence, at state action, and at the mutually-shaping relationships between them.’

‘… the benefits of interdisciplinarity’

‘… scholars are seeking to explore a wide range of under-exposed aspects of the conflict, recovering nuances and experimenting with methodology.’

‘ … the most dishevelled book in my collection…’

‘… it is possible to grasp the intellectual descent of ideas in Northern Ireland whilst not fathoming its postcode system…’

‘I had changed my course from Psychology having been caught one evening on the fringes of a gun battle between army and loyalists at Shaftesbury Square…’

‘it would have been more embarrassing to mistake someone’s religion than their gender, and equally inconceivable…’

‘I have gone for books which have constantly influenced me, that is books that I have re-read many times…’