INTRODUCTION

I was a student. It’s there on my CV. In 1982, I departed West Belfast to go where few people from the Upper Shankill had boldly gone before: to university.

Belfast in the eighties was like an episode of Dallas; lovely to look at and plenty of drama but basically the same sad, sorry story repeated week after week. I escaped to the New University of Ulster in Coleraine to become an intellectual, a socialist and a New Romantic. I was full of aspirations – like a futuristic car rolling off the production line in the DeLorean Motor factory. I yearned for peace in a time of Troubles. I dreamt of a bright future in a country convulsed by the past.

I was more naive than you could possibly imagine.