Brighton bomber Patrick Magee talks exclusively to Peter Taylor about how and why he planted a bomb in the Grand Hotel, while intelligence experts and bomb specialists speak for the first time about how they foiled a follow-up campaign on an even more devastating scale.
Patrick MageeSelf
Peter TaylorSelf - Interviewer
Made on the cusp of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a film retracing the conflict in Northern Ireland from 1968 to the present day - notably the civil rights movement of the late '60s, the outbreak of war in 1969, the birth of a peace process in the early 1990s that ultimately led to the IRA cease-fires of 1994 and 1997, and the current all-party negotiations that today offer the best chance for peace to the people of Northern Ireland in over a generation. Explores the complexities of the conflict through archival footage and portraits of political leaders who lived these events and played an important role in the search for a peaceful resolution to the seemingly interminable Irish “troubles”.
In his tower-block apartment in New Lodge, Joe reenacts memories from his childhood amidst the “Troubles”. In this Catholic area of Belfast, the number of deaths was tragically significant. Joe is joined by neighbours Jolene, Sean, Angie, and others, all willingly participating in this process of revisiting the collective memories that shaped their lives and the district they live in.
In the early 1970s, the world-class waves of Ireland were uncharted waters for the international surfing community. Amidst the ongoing conflict of the Troubles, pioneers in both Dublin and Belfast transcended political hostilities to host the 1972 Eurosurf championship. This look into the unsung history of the Emerald Isle’s now world-renowned surf scene details the power of sport to bridge any divide.
The women of Belfast played a unique role in holding together their families and communities during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. Filmed during the fragile 17-month paramilitary cease-fire, Daughters of the Troubles: Belfast Stories looks at the challenges facing women trying to put their direct experience of grassroots problems on the agenda of the established political parties. Their strength, first exhibited on the community level, started to reach a wider public.
The testimony of the men who unwittingly became war photographers on the streets of their own towns in Northern Ireland, when violence erupted around them. Instead of photographing weddings and celebrities, as they expected, they produced the images that crudely show the suffering of ordinary people between 1968 and 1998, the worst years of the conflict.
Belfast-born actor Stephen Rea explores the impact of Brexit and the uncertainty of the future of the Irish border in a short film written by Clare Dwyer Hogg.
This feature-length documentary investigates the role the British government played in the murder of over 120 civilians in Counties Armagh and Tyrone from July 1972 to 1978.
The painful story of Ireland and the Irish people, who struggled for centuries to free themselves from the tyrannical clutches of the British Empire; an epic tale of poverty, hunger, despair, violence and unyielding courage.
Recounts Ireland's history from British colonization to the territory's division in 1922, then from 1968 details a decade of events through images and eyewitness accounts of killings and such massacres as the infamous "Bloody Sunday" as the IRA argues their cause.
During the winter of 1969, young boys started to disappear off the streets of Belfast, never to be seen again.
The story of the Northern Ireland Troubles through the unflinching testimony of two men who played key roles on opposite sides of that bloody conflict. Nearly ten years ago the two paramilitary leaders told their stories on condition that they could never be revealed while they were still alive. The stories told by the Irish Republican Army's Brendan Hughes and Ulster Volunteer Force's David Ervine tell us of the motivations of the participants, the planning of campaigns of violence, the misery of a hunger strike, the tracking and killing of informers and the duplicity that ended a conflict that had lasted too long. It is also a narrative of the fate of combatants when their wars are over.
While the overt violence and conflict associated with the Troubles may have subsided since the Good Friday Agreement, it is true that many people in Northern Ireland continue to be affected by the legacy of the conflict. This includes individuals who were directly impacted by the violence, as well as those who continue to struggle with the social, economic, and political consequences of the conflict. While the actual violence and conflict may have ended, the legacy of the Troubles still lingers on in Northern Ireland; many are still struggling to come to terms with what happened and find a way to move forward.
Over fourteen days in March 1988, a sequence of traumatic events shook Northern Ireland to its core and shocked the world. But it was also 14 days that compelled one man, Redemptorist priest Fr Alec Reid, to find a way out of the deadly cycle of violence.
The story of Father Alec Reid’s complex and controversial peace plan to bring an end to violence in Northern Ireland, which eventually led to the historic Good Friday Agreement.
A poetic, intimate account of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, told through the stories of a handful of people who lost loved ones during the conflict. It’s not the story of the politicians or the terrorists. It’s the story of the mothers, sisters and daughters who kept life going when everything around them was crumbling.
It was the most notorious terrorist incident since the Gunpowder Plot - an attempt by the IRA to wipe out the entire UK government on 12 October 1984 as it convened on the south coast. Award-winning journalist Peter Taylor remembers the carnage as special effects and emotional testimony from survivors combine in a tense reconstruction. Followed by The Hunt for the Bomber.
Mairéad Farrell was shot dead by the SAS in Gibraltar in 1988 along with two other unarmed members of the IRA in one of the most controversial incidents arising from the Troubles in Northern Ireland. She had just been released from prison the year before after serving ten years for causing an explosion at an hotel near Belfast. The killing of the three provoked an international outcry and eventual enquiry. Due to her youth, her gender and her stature within the IRA, Mairéad Farrell was, unsurprisingly, quickly subsumed into the pantheon of Irish republican martyrs. But behind the mythologizing and demonisation of the time, there was also a real person, a flesh and blood young woman who was prepared to kill and die for her beliefs.
America's democracy feels more divided than ever - but what if the problem lies in how we vote? "American Troubles" explores whether proportional representation could break the cycle of dysfunction, drawing comparisons from two striking case studies: Portland, Oregon, where a bold new voting system is reshaping local politics, and Northern Ireland, where proportional elections helped end decades of violent conflict. Blending history, reform, and human stories, the film shows how electoral rules can entrench division - or create space for compromise.
Father Des Wilson was a priest with a socialist outlook. In trouble-torn Belfast he embedded himself in a community that needed help, where he lived and worked from 1969 onwards. An extraordinary man in extraordinary circumstances.
Caroline does not remember living in a time of peace; she has been a young child when the "troubles" in Belfast started. During the 25 years during which the war lasted, she got married and raised three children; and only a few weeks before the ceasefire started she was killed. Since the ceasefire, the situation in Northern Ireland has not changed much: the fear to talk is as big as ever before.