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

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I admit to having no personal connection with the events described at all, but I remember being very moved when we visited Belfast a couple of years ago and spent an afternoon in the museum which had at the time an exhibition detailing the history you describe. I have absolutely no personal connection with this situation, apart from as a bewildered and uncomprehending onlooker, but I too was very struck by the phrase ‘no victim of the troubles is denied his or her moment of acknowledgement regardless of affiliation or history. But I am already very grateful to the authors for providing a resource that allows me to begin to form an understanding of a tremendously complex and bloody situation that not only raged for a long time on the very doorstep of my own homeland – and in which my country was explicitly involved – but which swallowed up friends and relatives of my own friends and relatives. Thornton said that he and the other authors were opposed to any potential governmental involvement in the reprinting of the book as it would "leave it open to political influence". It is not really journalism, though it has been compiled by four journalists who may, collectively, have just written the book of their career" and that "There is not space to do justice to the scholarly comprehensiveness, the magisterial evenhandedness or the moral integrity of this astonishing book.

The names of those killed during the Troubles and listed in Lost Lives are also read out every year at the Unitarian Church in Dublin. It is a fitting tribute to the relentless monstrosity of those years but not a comfortable read at all.more compassionate, I feel, because no victim of the troubles is denied his or her moment of acknowledgement regardless of affiliation or history. There is something so powerful about a Reference Book, something about setting criteria, making a record and aiming for completeness. It was a puzzling suggestion: their production company, Doubleband Films, has an immense creative reputation, but how could a book with no narrative be turned into a film? 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. In most cases it was obvious who should be included, but there were scores of doubtful cases over which we debated and agonised for many hours.

Inspired by the book of the same name, LOST LIVES was written over seven years by five journalists, it is a book that uniquely records the circumstances of every single death in the conflict. Probably because we were all so young we just took it for granted that’s what happened and I was surprised in away how much Susan McKay’s book affected me. But such is the variety of accounts and of perspectives in the literature surrounding the troubles that something like Lost Lives is extremely useful, even if only for keeping track of where the events and people described intersect. David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton are four people from very different backgrounds, all with a strong connection to the events in Northern Ireland, and they have succeeded in what to many would be an insurmountable task.The 3,638 names do not appear at the tap of a screen, they come instead in a tome of 1,630 tightly printed pages. David McKittrick has been the Ireland correspondent of The Independent since 1986 and was named correspondent of the year in 1999 by BBC2's What the Papers Say.

When Grace saves his life in a kayaking accident - if it was an accident - and Evan's troubled son arrives to stay, all three are drawn together in a way that forces a reckoning with their personal traumas and draws them back into society. 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". The information detailed includes the "name, date of death, location, profession, religion, age and marital status, together with a brief summary of the circumstances of the particular death".

To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Collectively, they provide a renewed sense of just how widespread and all-consuming the Troubles were, how they caught up combatants and civilians, young and old alike. The film-makers create jolting contrast: the enduring beauty of the Irish landscape, against today’s gleamingly secure pleasure palaces, built after civil war was replaced by something like peace.