When the Troubles kicked off in Belfast in August 1969, Kenneth Branagh was eight years old. He recalls cowering under a table with his mother and his older brother as paving stones were torn from the street and hurled through the windows of their Catholic neighbours. Ciarán Hinds was away on holiday in the countryside, and only found out what was going on when his father, a doctor, phoned to say he wouldn’t be joining the family for his usual week, because he felt honour-bound to stay and tend to his patients.
Branagh was from working-class Protestant stock, while Hinds was a 16-year-old former altar boy from a Catholic family, whose school was close to the Branagh house. Though they never knew each other, they would have gone to the same cinema, hung out in the same park, and suffered the same Sunday doldrums. “Belfast Sunday evening, you know, was a grim time,” says Branagh. Even the kids’ playground in the park was shut, Hinds adds: “And not only was the playground locked, but each individual swing was too, and the roundabout was padlocked.” “It was savage, wasn’t it?” chips in Branagh. “Brutal, brutal!” sighs Hinds, shaking his head in mock disbelief.
