These stories of forbidden love and devotion during the Troubles reveal a more intimate side of conflict in Ireland

By Alison Garden, Senior Lecturer and UKRI Future Leaders Fellow, School of Arts, English and Languages, Queen's University Belfast

The following story is runner up in The Conversation Prize for writers 2026, a competition run in partnership with Faber and Curtis Brown. Read more about the competition here.

A woman is handing out paper cups of squash and flat lemonade at the back of a parochial hall in Belfast. This woman – I’ll call her Charlotte* – is there with her husband, helping out at a disco for the Catholic Church’s teenage congregants.…

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