Families at War

This book, companion to a BBC-TV documentary, marks the 20-year presence of British troops in Northern Ireland by exploring the feelings of grieving families on both sides of the conflict. The interviews, conducted by television reporter Taylor, concentrate on the human dimension of living with--and through--violence in support of a cause. We hear from a Londonderry woman who is a far remove from the British stereotype of the Irish Republican mother; from a British officer whose military career has been spent in Northern Ireland; from the mother of Mairead Farrell, a middle-class, convent-educated woman gunned down in Gibraltar as an alleged IRA volunteer; from a prisoner who repents of his youthful political terrorism, calling it ``too long a sacrifice.'' Intractable suffering for Protestant and Catholic alike, English or Irish, Nationalist or Unionist, is revealed in lives shaped by ancient enmity, and lamented in these moving personal expressions. (Nov.)