Peter Taylor: “Gradually I got used to reporting death. But I never became insensitive to it.”

In advance of the broadcast on BBC Radio 4 tonight, 8pm, of Peter Taylor’s documentary, Fifty Years Behind the Headlines – Reflections on Terror, the renowned journalist has written an article on the subject for the BBC website.  Most revealing, on many levels, is the part in which he recounts the “interview [which] affected [him] personally above all others.” The blanket protest by the IRA prisoners in the Maze started in 1977. They refused to wear prison uniform, insisting they were political prisoners and …

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Who won the war? More importantly, who if anyone, is creating the peace?

So, I have to admit, it slipped my mind that the embargo was up already on the preview of Peter Taylor’s elegiac look on the Trouble when he asked the question few have dared to: who won the war? Now it’s everywhere it seems. This is as much an elegy on the part of a veteran journalist, a last look on the appalling vista he brought consistently brought us right throughout the troubles. There’s some interesting effects in playing old …

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