Product Description

A work filled with passion and violence, with humanity and inhumanity. It is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles told through the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from the conflict. The authors - three of them Belfast-born and the fourth an American - are award-winning journalists. Over a seven-year period they examined every single death which was directly caused by the troubles. Their research has seen them interview witnesses, scour published material and draw on a huge range of investigative sources. "Lost Lives" 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. Each account is impossible to ignore.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #78374 in Books
• Published on: 2004-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 1648 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
We know that John Scullion, a Catholic shot dead in 1966, was the first. If only we could be sure that Charles Bennet, killed 33 years later, was the last. They are the opening and closing entries in this towering volume that documents the deaths of the 3600 men, women and children killed as a result of the troubles in Northern Ireland over the last 34 years. They are all here, IRA men and British soldiers, Loyalist terrorists and RUC officers, shoppers and tourists, mothers and children; those who made the news, those murdered unnoticed and unmourned by the outside world. In dispassionate, objective prose, the authors--three journalists and an academic--record the circumstances of every death and a detail about the dead. Here are the men who chose to fight, here are the people who found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. And here, in 1998, close to what we can only hope must be the end, are the dead of Omagh. In their story, as in others in this catalogue of evil, the humanity of those who rush to help the injured comes in moving contrast to the inhumanity of those behind the bomb. This book--a brilliant combination of the journalistic and the scholarly--will stand as a memorial to the dead. Would that it never requires a sequel. --Kim Fletcher

From the Author
Reviews of Lost Lives
"Reading Lost Lives, the same feelings come back again and again - pity, anger, despair, but perhaps most of all the powerful conviction that there has to be a better future than this."

- Tony Blair

"A devastating account of the price paid for peace. Read it and weep. I know I did, and without apology to the cynics."

- BBC correspondent Fergal Keane

"It is majestic and consoling. It is the first book of its kind, the only one ever, anywhere in the world, to document every single person to die in a specific conflict. This book is an act of redemption. It will live forever."

- Nell McCafferty

"A monumental book, the most affecting yet written about the troubles. It is a reclamation of the thousands of ordinary lives that otherwise would have been lost to history."

- the Observer

"The scrupulous, austere secular litany that is Lost Lives is the greatest act of remembrance that has yet emerged. It restores, with its economical but vivid detail, the humanity behind the statistics."

- Fintan O'Toole, Irish Times

"No other book will have its enduring power. Sombre, humane, and awesome in its scope and diligence, Lost Lives is the most important book of the year. Nothing else comes close."

- Hot Press magazine, Dublin

"Lost Lives is the most poignant, unforgettable testimony to what violent amnesia can do to human lives. It stands as the most morally compelling argument terrorists have yet faced against a return to war."

- The Sunday Telegraph

"Quite extraordinary ... there is not the space to do justice to the scholarly comprehensiveness, the magisterial evenhandedness or the moral integrity of this astonishing book."

-Robert McCrum, literary editor, the Observer

"A breathtaking feat of investigative scholarship, compiled with intelligence and compassion."

- Maurice Walsh, the New Statesman

"A huge, sorrowful, brilliant book, to be read sparingly, slowly and with reverence. Lost Lives is a magnificent achievement."

- The Sunday Tribune

"A book of the dead, but also a book of resurrection. It is a crowning achievement for the authors, who have undertaken a massive task with litle hope of recompense. This is public-service journalism at its finest."

- John O'Farrell

"This may be the most important and significant book of the year. Its genius, the unique and precious insight it offers, is a way of seeing behind the headlines and into the lives and deaths of ordinary people."

- The Independent on Sunday

"Possibly the most important book to emerge from the long years of violence in Northern Ireland."

- Mary Holland

"This labour of Hercules will be in research libraries worldwide and on the bookshelf of many a shattered home. It is a fitting and enduring memorial to a pain which should never have been."

- The Belfast Telegraph

"This book is more than a memorial. It is a powerful series of parables on the absolute futility of violence. It should be in every school in the land, with a fresh page turned every day."

- Irish Independent

"A superb piece of work. I know of no comparable work on any other conflict, none to match Lost Lives in comprehensiveness and detail."

- Professor Paul Wilkinson, University of St Andrews

"We beg our readers to read this bible of the troubles. It will make you weep, and make our political and paramilitary leaders realise that the only way forward is peace."

- The Sunday People

"Brilliant."

- Professor Paul Bew, Queen's University, Belfast

"This is THE book of the troubles. It deserves the highest praise possible."

- Fortnight magazine, Belfast.

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.

Customer Reviews

THE Troubles book.
Having read the petty criticism of the reviewer who awarded this important, brilliant book only one star, I felt compelled to write and state that it is my belief that Lost Lives is perhaps the only truly essential book to have been published on the last tragic 30 years of the Northern Ireland troubles.

The authors of this mighty tome deserve all the praise that they have already received, and then some. Yes, there are inaccuracies and some mistakes, many of which have been corrected in ongoing editions, but this is the first (and only) book to date that has put the focus fairly and squarely on the human cost of that era from which we are all now, hopefully, trying to move on from.

My guess is that our one-star contributor has an axe to grind or is just plain jealous of the achievement displayed in this book but, in the face of the recent onslaught of publications about failed politicians, so-called major scandals and revelations of the Troubles, and quick profiteering from these tragic years by greedy publishers, Lost Lives remains the only book worth bothering with.

A poignant reminder of those we forgot.
This book is an extremely compelling work, dispassionate but all the more sad because of it. As I read through it, I became very sad - reading how many people I knew met their violent death. It serves as a reminder to all that we must find a way forward by learning from the mistakes of the past. Over 3600 of them.
The one dissapointment in the work is that it excludes, on purpose, the names of those convicted of the murders. The reason given for this is so as not to give rise to vengeance but surely those seeking vengeance for the murder of a loved one or friend would know the names of those convicted.
I would recommend this book to anyone from the province and to people elsewhere - so that you may learn from our mistakes too.

Good for reference, but slightly innaccurate.
I never thought of myself as being affected by the terrorist attack on our communities, but leafing through this book I was reminded of friends, relatives and just atrocious events I heard about whilst growing up in Belfast and North Down. I was shocked by just how many I knew!

The dispassionate but nonetheless gruesome account of the Omagh Bomb brought a lump to my throat, even though none of the victims were known to me.

I would have appreciated a note of how many of the murders remain unsolved. It would be a chilling statistic to know how many murderers remain to be caught, and are living amongst us.

My only gripe is that some of the dates are wrong.

Some errors are understandable. The subject is difficult one, filled with numerous facts and figures and now sadly out of date.