Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women, and Children Who Died As a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles [Hardcover]

McKittrick (Author), David McKittrick (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1999

This volume is filled with passion and violence, with humanity and inhumanity. It is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles; it is not concerned with political bickering but with the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict. The authors - three of them Belfast-born and the fourth an American - are journalists. Over a seven-year period they examined every death which was directly caused by the troubles. Their research involved interviewing witnesses, scouring published material and drawing on a range of investigative sources to produce this study. The book traces the origins of the conflict from the firing of the first shots, through the carnage of the 1970s and 1980s and up to the republican and loyalist ceasefires and beyond. All the casualties are here: the RUC officer, the young soldier, the IRA volunteer, the loyalist paramilitary, the Catholic mother, the Protestant worker, the new-born baby.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

McKittrick (Through the Minefield, LJ 2/15/00) and his coauthors are all experienced journalists of the North Ireland beat. This book is a 1600-page obituary, cataloging each life lost during "the Troubles," a huge undertaking whose results have garnered accolades in the U.K. and Ireland. The 3,638 deaths from 1966 to 2000 are chronologically numbered and indexed. Each entry includes the name, number, date of death, county of habitation, marital status, age, religion, occupation, and where appropriate affiliation (IRA, UVF, UDF, British Army, etc.). Assembled from official casualty lists, newspaper accounts, secondary sources, conversations, privately published pamphlets, and the authors' own notes, entries range from a few lines to virtual chapters. West Belfast is the deadliest neighborhood, and the IRA is responsible for almost half the deaths, though a sizable minority of the victims dies from their own blunders, e.g., premature bomb detonation. Like the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, this book tallies the human cost of "the Troubles" in one place. To say that the book is sad or numbing would be an understatement. It belongs in every public and academic library.
Robert C. Moore, Raytheon, Sudbury, MA
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

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. He has won a number of other awards during more than 20 years of reporting on Northern Ireland, among them the Christopher Ewart-Biggs memorial prize for the promotion of peace and understanding in Ireland. His publications include four collections of his journalism. Seamus Kelters is an assistant news editor with the BBC in Belfast. He has also worked as a producer with BBC Northern Ireland's political unit and its current affairs programme Spotlight. Before joining the BBC he was a senior reporter with the Irish News where he specialised in security-related stories. He has written a book on Gaelic games. Brian Feeney, who holds a doctorate in Irish history, lives in Belfast and is a senior lecturer at a teacher-training college there. An experienced political commentator, he writes a weekly column for a local newspaper and was formerly a city councillor for almost a decade. Widely travelled, he is regarded as an expert on electoral mechanisms. Chris Thornton, an American living in Belfast, is the security correspondent of the Belfast Telegraph. He has previous experience with both of Belfast's main morning newspapers, the News Letter and the Irish News. --This text refers to an alternate Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 1630 pages
• Publisher: Mainstream (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 184018227X
• ISBN-13: 978-1840182279
• Product Dimensions: 9.7 x 6 x 2.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,313,178 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Heartbreaking, January 11, 2000

By 

[e-mail] (Northern Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women, and Children Who Died As a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Hardcover)

Perhaps the best tribute possible for the people whose lives have been wasted over the last 30 years in Northern Ireland.

The only pity is that the sheer numbers make it impossible to also tell the stories of all of the victims who who survived but had their lives shattered.

This book should be supplied as an antidote to those who find terrorism 'romantic' or seek to justify violence from any side in Ireland.

Many of the stories would make a stone weep; this is not an easy book to read. Nevertheless it is essential to anyone who wants an insight into the real cost of the troubles.

31 of 35 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The truth is always stark, but not usually as stark as this., December 30, 1999

By 

"[e-mail]" (Dublin, Ireland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Lost Lives: The Stories of the Men, Women, and Children Who Died As a Result of the Northern Ireland Troubles (Hardcover)

This is not a book for the faint of heart. Lost Lives is basically a compiled list of the victims of the Northern Ireland Troubles and gives the detail of their actual death, who they were, and what they were doing at the time. It would be easier to read the writings of Dante in a single sitting than it would be to spend more than a half an hour reading these most tragic tales.

If you care at all about people, this book will affect you deeply, because the majority of people listed here are merely guilty of being in the wrong place at the wrong time or perhaps their beliefs shading differently to their neighbors.

If you have ever endorsed or supported any form of discrimination, bigotry, or military action, and you consider yourself a rational individual, this book will surely make you reconsider your views on such matters.

The authors of this massive and heartrending work will be seen in the course of time to have made a most worthwhile contribution toward consolidating the Irish Peace Process.

Essential and worthwhile reading for any scholar of History.