INVESTIGATIVE journalist Martin Dillon has documented some of the most horrific chapters of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
His reportage and documentaries as a journalist for the BBC have won him awards and critical acclaim over many years, and his experience and understanding of the conflict has provided gripping material for the many books he had published on the topic.
More than 250,000 copies of his trilogy The Shankill Butchers (1989), The Dirty War (1990) and God and the Gun (1997), have been sold in Britain and Ireland alone to date.
This month the best-selling author publishes a title which highlights some of the most poignant chapters of his career, but adds, for the first time, his personal backstory – including how he was abused by a Belfast paedophile as a child, spent time in a Catholic seminary in Britain and received death threats by both Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries.
In his frank memoir Crossing the Line – My life on The Edge, Dillon charts his formative years growing up in Belfast, and the raw detail of the highs and lows of his professional career of over thirty years.
Among the personal experiences he shares for the first time are the painful memories from his childhood and the “fright and confusion” he felt when he became one of four boyhood friends who “fell into the clutches of a middle-aged man”.
The paedophile was a friend of one of the boys’ parents who regularly abused them all while taking them on trips to the cinema.
“Why I never shared this horror with my parents remains a mystery to me,” he says, “being a child I must have been frightened and confused, perhaps I found it difficult to explain.”
He revealed that the abuse only stopped when the eldest of the boys, his cousin Don, broke their silence by telling his mother, and “saved us all”.
Dillon goes on to share his time spent at a seminary in Romsey, Hampshire, in his youth, before delving into the path which brought him to journalism and ultimately a life spent at the coalface of the Troubles in Northern Ireland.
Among the most memorable of his professional experiences, Dillon tells how he persuaded former SDLP leader John Hume into a live BBC studio radio debate with Gerry Adams, how this in turn lead to the Hume-Adams Talks and ultimately to the Good Friday Agreement.
Elsewhere he reveals how British politicians were sent to him seeking insight as whether there was a possibility of negotiating an end to the Ireland conflict, due to his understanding of the personalities and strengths of the IRA’s leadership.
The book also unravels the journalist’s difficult decision to leave the BBC and Northern Ireland - the first for professional reasons, the latter due to death threats from Republican and Loyalist paramilitaries.
“Journalism is apparently the first draft of history, so presumably the journalist’s memoir can be the second,” Tom McGurk, writes in a foreword to the book.
“If Martin Dillon’s remembrance here achieves equivalent significance to his original reportage, then this book should be of historical impact,” he adds.
Crossing the Line – My Life on The Edge by Martin Dillon, costs €18.99, published by Merrion Press. ISBN:9781785371301
For information or to purchase a copy click here
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