There was a time when the conflict in Northern Ireland suffused popular culture, with its easily explicable cast of Catholics and Protestants and its deceptively simple narrative of joining the Republic of Ireland versus remaining under the protective wing of Great Britain. The IRA loomed large – an irregular force giving the Brits hell, a pre-Al Qaeda byword for terrorism.
But in 1998, after a furious but low-intensity war that claimed almost 3,700 victims over 30 years, the two sides suddenly called it a draw. Political representatives of paramilitary groups and mainstream political parties hammered out the Good Friday Agreement, outlining a cessation of major sectarian violence, the decommissioning of weapons, and the release of prisoners affiliated with groups like the IRA and its unionist analogue, the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF). ...
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