Twenty years ago this weekend, I drove through a British army checkpoint above Newry and breathed that sigh of relief I always felt when I left Northern Ireland. But that afternoon I could dream that things would be different soon, that the soldier who checked my car boot would be recalled, that the ugly post would be taken down.
I was driving home from Belfast, after producing RTE’s television coverage of the Good Friday Agreement. I had stood in the mud for days, eaten endless fish and chips, watched Ian Paisley march up the hill and back down again, and cried when the deal was done. Just over four months later I crossed back over, to lay TV cables in the rubble of the Omagh bombing. I learned...