‘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.’
‘…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.’
‘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…’