John Doyle’s new book, A Great Feast of Light: Growing Up Irish in the Television Age chronicles his childhood in Ireland. Although Doyle, a television critic for the Globe and Mail, chooses the arrival of television and Ireland’s negotiation of it as his central theme, the Troubles serve as a stark backdrop to the newly discovered “feast of light”. Instead of hearing of the Catholic marches and protests on the wireless, the Doyle family was able to watch events unfold before their eyes, linking them to their fellow countrymen. Not only were they linked to the protests, but to the clashes with police and the British army, and to the bombings that plagued Ireland during the Troubles. And it was television that informed Doyle about the bombings in Dublin that happened as he was on the train (or bus - I can't remember and I've lent the book to someone else). Much of Doyle’s book is taken up with his descriptions of going to school, but then rushing home to catch such programs as I Love Lucy; the Donna Reed Show; Upstairs, Downstairs; the Late Late Show and various American Westerns. His discovery of Monty Python is another pivotal moment in the book. However, Ireland’s post-war history is an ever-present foil to the glitzy and fictitious world of television.
Breakfast on Pluto, originally a book by Patrick McCabe and now a film directed by Neil Jordan (The Crying Game) is another recent example of a personal story being told against the backdrop of the Troubles. Patrick “Kitten” Braden (played by Cillian Murphy) is a transgender boy living in a town “just over the border” (I assumed it was in the north, but my mother pointed out that the Garda – the Republic of Ireland police – came to the rescue during a bomb scene, although why the south was being bombed is another question). Throughout the movie, Kitten’s exploration of his sexuality and search for his mother are framed by the unfolding violence in Britain and Northern Ireland. 
He forms a relationship with an IRA gun-running rocker and watches his childhood friend Irwin build ties with the Republican Army. He is later accused of bombing a London nightclub, based solely on his accent and dress habits.The history of Ireland figures prominently in both of these works, but at their core, they are personal stories of human experience. I look back on my childhood, with summers spent in Belfast where my grandparents lived (and my mother grew up), and can now see how it, too was framed by the Troubles. As a child, I barely knew the politics contributing to the disputes, but I do remember parts of the conflict touching my life.
One memory I have is of driving around Belfast (around 1984) and coming to a stop at a red light. I looked out the window and came face to face with the end of a machine gun, carried by a policeman. I’d never seen such heavily armed people in my life. The man was simply patrolling the area, but it still struck me as ominous. The incident was brief, and hardly impacting, but it connected me to the Troubles.
My other memory connected me more directly to the conflict in Northern Ireland. My grandparents lived in south Belfast, next door to a judge. The IRA called in a car bomb threat one day and the surrounding buildings were evacuated - except for my grandmother who had been presumed to have been out. In fact, she was in her kitchen making apple pies. The bomb exploded and blew out the front of my grandparents’ house. Luckily, the kitchen was in the back of the house and like a well-trained World War II Londoner, my grandmother dove underneath the kitchen table. Although frightened, she was unhurt, though she never made another apple pie, and the front of the house was rebuilt. However, that story still exists in my family’s lore as a normal day brought into relief by the Troubles.
For more information on The Troubles in Northern Ireland, go to:
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