No sides taken in this wide-ranging look back at the years of the Troubles

In Malachi O’Doherty’s typically freewheeling and idiosyncratic new book, he imagines meeting his teenage self and telling him what the next half century was to bring

British Army soldiers in the North on October 1, 1969, the year the Troubles began Pic: Getty

History: Fifty Years On: The Troubles and the Struggle for Change in Northern Ireland, By Malachi O’Doherty, Atlantic Books, €24

Malachi O’Doherty freely admits that he never saw the Troubles coming. The Belfast writer and broadcaster was on Divis Street on August 14, 1969, when the RUC fired Browning machine guns at republican rioters throwing petrol bombs. “Only blanks,” the 18-year-old reassured two American journalists, blissfully unaware they were all witnessing the start ...