It is, in fact, that most disparaged genre, contemporary history, the essential first draft of some terrible events to which, in years to come, professional historians, poets, novelists and biographers will surely turn for the unvarnished truth.

It is not really journalism, though it has been compiled by four journalists who may, collectively, have just written the book of their career. It turned out that Number 2555, Ronnie Finlay, aged 32, Protestant, married, 3 children, factory worker, shot by the IRA on 23 August 1983 as he left his factory, was her dad's best friend. Mike McCahill in The Guardian wrote that "The variation of voices staves off any monotony inherent in the list format, and each story opens up some revealing front. Those who died in the troubles included civilians, members of loyalist and republican groups, political figures, soldiers , joyriders, alleged drug dealers, judges and magistrates, those killed in the course of armed robberies, prison officers, police officers, convicted killers, businessmen, alleged informers, Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR) members, those who died on hunger strike, men, women, children, pensioners and unborn babies. The scrupulous, austere, secular litany that is Lost Lives is the greatest act of remembrance that has yet emerged.I have absolutely no personal connection with this situation, apart from as a bewildered and uncomprehending onlooker, but I too was very struck by the phrase ‘no victim of the troubles is denied his or her moment of acknowledgement regardless of affiliation or history. The timeline-style layout didn't make for the most engaging writing, but it was very easily understandable. It is human nature that this should be so: we have seen our task as simply providing the facts which will allow readers to make their own judgements.

Authors David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton interviewed many witnesses and drew on previously published material to list the deaths of the 3,600 men, women and children killed as a result of the Troubles.Even here, though, Mark Garrett’s roaming camera detects a certain manmade melancholy, and those words and stories keep coming at us, their accumulated weight of detail socking the viewer in the gut and bringing tears to the eyes. A soldier who was down in the street shot at the sniper and the reporter thought that saved his life. In most cases it was obvious who should be included, but there were scores of doubtful cases over which we debated and agonised for many hours. Imagine, then, undertaking to create an account – as objective an account as possible – of each of the deaths in a situation of conflict which to all intents and purposes is still current (albeit in a much muted form) within your own country and your own culture.

On 23 October 2019, a film (1 hour, 29 minutes) based on the book Lost Lives was released in the UK for one night only. The film features voiceovers from the actors Kenneth Branagh, Roma Downey, Adrian Dunbar, Brendan Gleeson, Ciarán Hinds, Sean McGinley, Liam Neeson, James Nesbitt, Stephen Rea, and Bronagh Waugh.And following the death of co-author Seamus Kelters, Mr Thornton said: “It’s wonderful that the book is still being recognised as important.

By attempting historical objectivity, I mean aiming for the very thing David McKittrick describes so elegantly in the above excerpt from his introduction to Lost Lives.For a specialist, it would be an excellent reference volume (the kind of thing historians in my field can only dream in vain of having). Between 1966 and 1999, 3,636 lives were lost in the Troubles and Lost Lives contains a brief record of every one: name, date of death, location, profession, religion, age and marital status, together with a brief summary of the circumstances of the particular death. Eventually Mainstream Publishing in Edinburgh agreed to take a massive financial gamble to bring out the book.