It started as a reporter’s assignment: list all the people killed in the Troubles in north Belfast up to the early 1990s.
It was a laborious, macabre catalogue – name, date, location – to be published in the Irish News, a Belfast daily paper, and then quite possibly forgotten about in the next news cycle.
Except the list grew, widened, deepened. Eventually it covered all of Northern Ireland, all the killings, and told the stories of all the dead.
It became Lost Lives, a 1,600-page book just shy of a million words. Published in 1999, it documented more than 3,700 deaths spanning the entire Troubles. It is a unique publication – nothing comparable exists for any other conflict.
On Saturday, BBC Two will screen the UK-wide television premiere of the book’s transformation into film: a 90-minute feature with narrations by Liam Neeson, Bríd Brennan, Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Rea and other actors.
Its co-directors, Dermot Lavery and Michael Hewitt, describe the film as a requiem for the Troubles and an injunction to not repeat the past. “The book and the film are a reminder of the scale and intensity of the conflict,” said Lavery. “It’s very important that we remind ourselves of just how bad it was. This is the sum of all the grief.”
The film focuses on 18 cases chosen because they were deemed representative of the thousands killed. “The selection was often based on letters or quotations, something that someone said that reached out from the pages and struck us as extraordinarily eloquent in a time of grief,” said Lavery.
The film blends cinematic depictions of Northern Irish landscapes with archive news footage – some of it extremely graphic – as well as press clippings and a score performed by the Ulster Orchestra.
The final credits roll for several minutes because they include every name in the book plus those killed since 1999, ending with Lyra McKee, the writer shot dead during a riot in Derry last year.
“We made a commitment to list everyone – to leave a moment of profound reflection at the end,” said Lavery.
The two directors hope the film will be shown in conflict and post-conflict zones around the world. “We have been struck by the silence that follows screenings,” said Hewitt. “People reflect on the human cost.”
The film, which was broadcast on BBC One Northern Ireland last month, comes at a sensitive time.
Sinn Féin triumphed in Ireland’s general election but still faces questions over its links with the IRA. Brexit has raised questions about Northern Ireland’s constitutional status, rattling loyalists and emboldening republicans.
In Northern Ireland, so-called “legacy issues” – unresolved killings from the Troubles – continue to polarise public opinion and haunt politics. This week, a Belfast coroner’s court heard final oral evidence into the army’s shooting dead of 10 people in Ballymurphy in 1971. Next week, Dennis Hutchings, a 78-year-old former soldier, goes on trial over a 1974 killing, a prosecution that has angered many in the Conservative party.
Those behind Lost Lives, both book and film, withheld condemnation and focused on the humanity of those killed and the anguish of those left behind.
The film includes the story of nine-year-old Patrick Rooney, killed in his home by a Royal Ulster Constabulary bullet during a riot in August 1969.
The book also tells the story of Jim Seymour, an RUC constable shot in 1973. He lay in a hospital bed, a bullet in his head, apparently conscious but unable to move or speak, until he died in 1995, aged 55. Every day of those 22 years he was visited by his wife, May.
The originator of Lost Lives was the late Seamus Kelters, an Irish News reporter who started documenting the dead of north Belfast and ended up part of a team of journalists and academics: David McKittrick, Brian Feeney, Chris Thornton and David McVea, which produced an exhaustive, singular work.
“We kept it as impartial as we could,” said McKittrick, the former Ireland correspondent of the Independent. “We didn’t have the authority to say which killing was murder and which was not.” Before publication he had braced for political backlash but none came. “Nobody said the book shouldn’t exist.”
Everyone seemed to recognise the book’s value, including shoplifters. Lost Lives was reportedly the most stolen book in Belfast.
