I grew up in Northern Ireland in the 1980s during the Troubles. For my parents, and just about every other adult, daily life was punctuated with news of bomb attacks, incendiary devices, kidnappings, kneecappings and murders, all motivated in one way or another by a border.
Plenty of children’s lives were blighted, too, but I had no direct experience of the conflict – or even, initially, of the border. Then, one day when I was six, I ended up in a car heading south with my little brother, my parents and my maternal grandparents.
