Malachi O'Doherty is a writer and broadcaster based in Belfast. He is a regular contributor to the Belfast Telegraph and to several BBC radio programmes. He covered the Troubles and the peace process as a journalist and has written for several Irish and British newspapers and magazines, including the Irish Times, the New Statesman, the Scotsman and the Guardian.
A haunting portrait of a vanished place and time... written with such grace, tenderness, anger and, most of all, sorrow... Gripping and brilliant... Every word is suffused with humanity. * Sunday Independent on The Year of Chaos * O'Doherty's analysis is convincing precisely because he lived through what he is analysing. * Sunday Times on The Year of Chaos * It is deeply researched and often revelatory. It is not without humour either... The book is a variegated and sensitive exploration of how sectarianism plays out in education, geography, language, dating, marriage, sports and newspapers. O'Doherty expertly guides us through a world where people still have to watch what they say, whether out of fear or common decency.' * Literary Review *