Lost Lives - The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles

Lost Lives
The stories of the men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles
By David McKittrick, Seamus Kelters, Brian Feeney and Chris Thornton (1999)

Published by:

Mainstream Publishing Company Ltd,

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh

EH1 3YG

ISBN 1 84018 227 X
Hardback 1630pp £25.00

Cover picture courtesy of the Belfast Telegraph

From the inside front cover:

'This is a unique work filled with passion and violence, with humanity and inhumanity. It is the story of the Northern Ireland troubles told as never before; it is not concerned with the political bickering but with the lives of those who have suffered and the deaths which have resulted from more than three decades of conflict.

The authors - three of them Belfast-born and the fourth an American - are award-winning journalists. Over a seven-year period, they examined every single death which was directly caused by the troubles. Their research has seen them interview withnesses, scour published material and draw on a huge range of investigative sources to produce a work of epic proportions. Never before has conflict anywhere in the world been subjected to such meticulous scrutiny.

Lost Lives traces the origins of the conflict from the firing of the first shots, through the carnage of the 1970s and 1980s to the republican and loyalist ceasefires and beyond. All the casualties are here: the RUC officer, the young soldier, the IRA volunteer, the loyalist paramilitary, the Catholic mother, the Protestant worker, the new-born baby. Each account is imposible to ignore.

As a reference book, Lost Lives is indispensable; as a landscape of history painted in fine detail, it is unique. For anyone interested in Northern Ireand - or in the human cost of conflict anywhere - this is destined to be the defining work.'

There have been four editions, and 25 (?) printings of the book:

• McKittrick, David., Kelters, Seamus., Feeney, Brian., and Thornton, Chris. (1999). Lost Lives: The Stories of men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles. Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company. ... [3816] - [Book]
• McKittrick, David., Kelters, Seamus., Feeney, Brian., and Thornton, Chris. (2001). Lost Lives: The Stories of men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, (2nd Ed., 10 May 2001). Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company. ... [] - [Book]
• McKittrick, David., Kelters, Seamus., Feeney, Brian., and Thornton, Chris. (2004). Lost Lives: The Stories of men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, (3rd Ed., 1 June 2004). Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company. ... [6894] - [Book]
• McKittrick, David., Kelters, Seamus., Feeney, Brian., and Thornton, Chris. (2007?). Lost Lives: The Stories of men, women and children who died as a result of the Northern Ireland troubles, (4th Ed.). Edinburgh: Mainstream Publishing Company. ... [] - [Book]

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.
It was also shown on BBC One NI at 21:00 on 16 February 2020, and on BBC Two at 22:00 on 7 March 2020. (It was available on BBC iPlayer for a period after its broadcast.)

See:
Lost Lives Film website: www.lostlivesthefilm.com/
CAIN: Movies with 'the Troubles' as a theme (1968 to present)

McCahill, Mike. (2019). 'Lost Lives review – requiem for victims of the Troubles', The Guardian, (16 October 2019), (on-line version)