In the early days of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian armoured columns pushed east along the Zhytomyr highway towards Kyiv. Makariv, a small settlement of about 10,000 people 36 miles west of Kyiv, sat on their route. The town was wrecked in the month of fighting that ensued.

Roughly 40% of the settlement’s infrastructure was destroyed and the bodies of 132 executed civilians were recovered by April 2022. A 2026 account puts the total death toll as high as 238. Yet Makariv was never taken. It held, with Russian forces only taking control of about 10% of its land, and Kyiv held behind it.

“For some reason, Makariv was bypassed in the press,” said local museum curator Vitaly Gedz in a 2026 interview. “They wrote about Makariv twice, ‘it was occupied and then liberated’ … It was only 10% occupied, but it was very badly destroyed.”

On a visit to Makariv the previous year, we visited Gedz’s museum. Among the objects on display there were military maps recovered after Russian forces withdrew. Russian units were found to be carrying Soviet-era sheets, some of which dated back to 1969, with the modern border between Russia and Ukraine often added in pen.

In the early days of the invasion, Ukraine’s national road agency also asked communities to take down road signs to disorientate the advancing Russian columns. For a few weeks in 2022, being hard to read was a defence for Makariv. It is not any longer.

What the record cannot see

Ukraine’s recovery needs currently stand at nearly US$588 billion (£435 billion) – almost three times its GDP for 2025. This total is still moving. Damaged energy assets alone rose by roughly 21% between February 2025 and February 2026, when the fourth and fifth assessments of Ukraine’s reconstruction needs were released.

According to a recent BBC analysis, Kyiv is also now suffering more daily air raid alerts than at any time in the war so far. This bombardment comes weeks after the deputy speaker of the Russian parliament, Pyotr Tolstoy, urged strikes on Ukrainian cities “to demoralise the public”.

Funds for reconstruction across Ukraine must therefore be rationed, and this rationing runs on records with a particular shape. Ukraine’s national recovery and reconstruction is managed using two main online databases. The first of these is the Register of Damaged and Destroyed Property.

This register records which buildings have been harmed, who owns them and what they are worth. An entry is what allows households and businesses to claim compensation, and it will form the basis of any future reparation claim against Russia.

Getting a building on to this list is the responsibility of each individual council. The fourth assessment of Ukraine’s reconstruction needs found that, in December 2024, the register held information about “90+ percent” of damaged apartment blocks in Ukraine but only “nearly 60 percent” of damaged single-family houses.

One survey of a block registers hundreds of dwellings, while a street of houses must be walked gate by gate by staff small councils generally do not have. Like many other small settlements across Ukraine, Makariv is built mainly of houses, the category the register is worst at recording.

The second database is the Digital Reconstruction Ecosystem for Accountable Management. More commonly known as Dream, this is the official platform for the Ukrainian government’s public investment plan. Councils enter their own projects and funders choose from what is there.

The project data local authorities need to provide include descriptions, building designs, budget breakdowns, contracting and payment records and even photos, all of which take time and require money to record. This matters in towns and villages where public servants may not have the resources or experience.

We looked up what Makariv has put into Dream. Its council has registered 70 projects on the portal. Nearly 50% carry no costed amount at all, compared with 24% nationally. An uncosted project cannot be funded, bundled or compared.

This absence has consequences. In July 2025, we held a workshop in Makariv with around 30 residents, including teachers, clerical staff, museum workers and veterans. Interrupted by air alerts, they marked a plan of the settlement spread across two tables.

One woman traced her journey to work, which has grown from 5 miles to 20 miles since the overpass where the Makariv road crosses the Zhytomyr highway was wrecked in 2022. Others pointed out that when a fire breaks out in Makariv or the outlying villages, the fire engine now comes from Byshiv nearly 14 miles away as Makariv’s own station has been destroyed.

None of this argues against digital reconstruction. Ukraine’s systems are among the most transparent anywhere. It is an argument about who does the work of being counted, because a system that asks local authorities to enter themselves will always favour those with staff to spare.

“We definitely did all we could and I can honestly sleep at night knowing there was nothing I physically could have done any different.”

It is 10 years since Nicola Urquhart’s son, Corrie Mckeague, disappeared on 24 September 2016 after a night out in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. For the months and years that followed, she embodied a mother’s love and determination to find the truth: to never give up.

The RAF gunner’s body has never been found but he was officially declared dead in 2022, when an inquest ruled he had died after climbing into a commercial waste bin before it was tipped into a waste lorry.

Nicola is composed and reflective as she recalls when her son went missing. He had just turned 23 and within months would become a dad.

She says her son would be forever in her thoughts, but adds: “I’ve given myself closure; my son is dead.”

She spoke to the BBC after what would have been Corrie’s 33rd birthday and ahead of the 10th anniversary of his disappearance.

She says she last saw her son when she went for a birthday meal with him at Cheers in Bury St Edmunds, adding he was a “social hand grenade” who “really did live every moment at a hundred miles an hour”.

A decade on, she says there is “never an end” to losing somebody but it is about “managing each day”.

A judge has ordered the White House to immediately reinstate press access for three news organisations barred from the building last week by US President Donald Trump.

A District of Columbia court issued a temporary restraining order against the ban, meaning CNN, MS NOW and Politico must have their access restored for 14 days.

The three outlets had launched a legal challenge which called the ban unconstitutional after their reporters had their hard passes for the White House confiscated and were denied access.

The Trump administration sought to defend the move in court, accusing the outlets of publishing false information and threatening national security – an argument the court rejected.

The White House is yet to comment on the ruling, and lawyers acting for the president may choose to take further legal action.

Judge Timothy Kelly ruled CNN, Politico and MS NOW were “likely to succeed” in showing the White House had not exercised “adequate due process” in implementing the ban.

He also cast doubt on the Trump administration’s arguments that the bans were motivated by national security concerns, pointing out the president made no mention of that in his initial announcement.

The ruling continued: “The record lacks factual support for Defendants’ contention that the revocation of Plaintiffs’ hard passes will in fact protect national security or that national security will be endangered if the Court orders their passes reinstated while this litigation proceeds.”

In its defence of the ban, the Trump administration cited a number of articles published by the outlets, including some about construction at the White House, including work on a new ballroom.

The judge said that “in most cases” the stories the White House took issue with were written by journalists who “did not even hold card passes” – and in the remaining cases, the Trump administration did not demonstrate “reason to believe that the reporter’s possession of the hard pass was integral to the stories identified”.

Dapper Brad Pitt put on a loved-up display with his stunning girlfriend Ines de Ramon at a photocall for his new film Heart of the Beast on Wednesday night.

The actor, 62, held hands with the beauty, 33, as he promoted the new movie at the San Sebastian Film Festival and looked smart in a black suit, with his hair in an old Hollywood slicked back style. 

Ines turned heads in a glamorous strappy green lace dress which showed off her incredible figure.

The pair – who began dating in late 2022 – didn’t leave each other’s sides all night as they held hands and posed for snaps together. 

In his new film Heart of the Beast, Brad stars as retired Special Forces officer James Belmont, who is accompanied by his retired combat dog Odin when their plane crashes in the remote Alaskan wilderness. 

The two survive the crash but they’re forced to fight for survival in bitter conditions while hoping to be rescued.

The actor, 62, held hands with the beauty, 33, as he promoted the new movie at the San Sebastian Film Festival

Brad was mobbed by fans when he arrived at the festival last week – just after friends revealed how his marriage to Angelina Jolie sent his life ‘spiraling’. 

A source close to Brad said: ‘He never had a drink problem, he had an Angelina problem. He’s worked hard on himself and he’s now, finally, in a really good place.’

Brad and Angelina, 51, split back in September 2016 following just two years of marriage.

It comes after just last week Brad raved about the night of revelry he enjoyed with his girlfriend Ines at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce‘s wedding in July.

The pair were among the 1,000-strong guest list at the Madison Square Garden ceremony officiated by Adam Sandler.

When he was asked about the celebrations recently, Brad replied: ‘You mean the wedding of the century?’

He added to Entertainment Tonight: ‘Let me tell you, that was such an amazing night. I think we were there 10 hours, maybe 12. It was so thoughtful and well-planned and really moving and great fun.’

The star, who recently confessed to being ‘off the wagon’ after seven years of sobriety, shared that he briefly lost track of Ines amid the thicket of celebrities as a result of the stringent no-phone policy the newlyweds put in place.

In his new film Heart of the Beast, Brad stars as retired Special Forces officer James Belmont, who is accompanied by his retired combat dog Odin when their plane crashes in Alaska

Heartthrob Brad looked smart in a black suit and had his hair in an old Hollywood slicked back style

The pair – who began dating in late 2022 – didn’t leave each other’s sides all night as they held hands and posed for snaps together

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Ines turned heads in a glamorous strappy green lace dress which showed off her incredible figure

It comes after just last week Brad raved about the night of revelry he enjoyed with his girlfriend Ines at Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding in July

The pair looked loved-up as they posed for snaps together

The pair held hands as they made their way to the red carpet 

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Ines looked stunning in a green lace dress

Brad sweetly put his arms around her as they posed for the cameras

He put on an animated display ahead of signing autographs 

Ines was there to support his at the photocall

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He made a note of how ‘big’ the reception was and acknowledged with a laugh that ‘at one point I lost her in the melee on the dance floor’.

However he insisted the period they spent wedged apart was ‘not long’, insofar as ‘there’s always someone to go: ‘That way. She went that way.”

The pair made their Instagram debut as a couple in a slew of images showing the outfits they wore to Taylor and Travis’s nuptials. 

The pair married at Madison Square Garden but have yet to share any pictures from the event. 

From the damning accusations against King Charles in Earl Spencer’s newly published book about Princess Diana to Harry and Meghan’s return to Britain, the Royal Firm have been living under a fresh cloud of controversy this month.

But true to form last night, William and Kate put the drama aside, stepping out as a united front on the red carpet for the premiere of Digger, starring Tom Cruise.

While the pair may have appeared to be ‘all smiles’ for the cameras, as a body language expert, here are all the subtle signs in the Wales’s behaviour you may have missed and what they reveal about how the couple are handling the fallout from this month’s drama.

On the surface the couple were radiant, with Kate in a stunning purple floor-length gown and William in a dapper velvet smoking jacket.

Kate has always approached public engagements with enthusiasm and grace – but she returned with a different energy in 2024 when she resumed royal duties after taking time away to receive cancer treatment.

Health problems are often known to put life, worries and problems into context as priorities become clear. The way Kate carried herself yesterday made it obvious that she’s found a way to put family rifts aside and place duty above all else. With her head held high, shoulders open and a wide, genuine smile on her face – Kate’s body language was a signal to the world that she’s ready to take it all in her stride.

William clenched his fist during the outing, suggesting his hand placement may reveal that he’s carrying the weight of his family’s troubles

The Prince of Wales could also be seen putting his hand on his stomach, which is potentially a mechanism for self-soothing – albeit most likely used subconsciously

Kate is clearly back, not only as the matriarch and strength of the Royal Firm, but also its star. Indeed, her signals of resilience and stoicism look borrowed from the late Queen, who used the ‘smile and wave’ solution all her life.

Even Kate’s jewellery, a purple amethyst heart necklace which dates back to 1923, provided subtle signalling. Wearing the piece was a way for Kate to tell the world she’s open to family bonds and rebuilding a relationship with the Sussexes. The necklace and its matching earrings were last worn by Queen Camilla for the James Bond Skyfall premiere in 2012, so perhaps wearing it again was an ode to Kate’s unwavering support for the Firm.

The Princess of Wales exudes a strong confidence that William subtly struggles to mirror. A closer look at William’s hand placement as he walks out onto the carpet reveals that behind his best efforts to brandish a proud smile, it’s clear that he’s constantly carrying the weight of his family’s troubles.

For a start, on his descent down the stairs he subtly clenches his fists, a signal for emotional restraint and hidden tension. Then he puts his hand on his stomach – a mechanism for self-soothing, albeit most likely used subconsciously.

Poor William must be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Who could blame him? William is juggling the strain on the monarchy that Earl Spencer’s book has caused, by lambasting the King’s handling of Diana’s death. And there’s the obvious burden of the book bringing up all the grief and sorrow William must feel for his mother, coupled with his ongoing rift with Harry.

Kate appeared to borrow her signals of resilience and stoicism from the late Queen, who used the ‘smile and wave’ solution all her life

The Princess of Wales wore a purple amethyst heart necklace and matching earrings which were last worn by Queen Camilla in 2012, perhaps showing Kate’s support for the Firm

Tom Cruise was seen helping Kate up the stairs as the pair chatted, suggesting their longstanding friendship is stronger than ever

Back in 2022 at the Top Gun: Maverick premiere, Cruise offered Kate his hand to assist her up the stairs – but she subsequently swapped her clutch to her left hand

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Although subtle gestures give away the weight that William obviously carried, his beaming smile and a glowing Kate prove that the Waleses are committed to showing up for the public.

And what of Kate’s interaction with Tom Cruise? Readers may remember that rumours swirled in 2022 after it was alleged that Kate subtly swerved Cruise at the Top Gun: Maverick premiere. In true gentlemanly fashion, Cruise offered Kate his hand to assist her up the stairs in her long black ball gown. Once Cruise let go of her hand, Kate swapped her clutch into her left hand.

The subtle interaction raised questions about royal protocol – was Kate merely putting her clutch back into her left hand to keep it free to shake hands with people? Or was it a deliberate move to ensure that Cruise wouldn’t take her hand again?

Whatever Kate’s motives were in 2022, the interaction played out differently last night. Sharing a cheerful grin alongside the actor, it seems that Kate and Cruise’s longstanding friendship is stronger than ever.

Here, Kate starts with her clutch in her left hand. Cruise reaches to guide her and she places the clutch in her right, showing she’s secure in the fact that Cruise is operating from a place of old-fashioned gallantry.

Cruise reaches his hand out to touch Kate’s elbow in an ‘awareness’ ritual, offering to guide Kate down the stairs – but she is at first holding her clutch in her left hand

Once the Princess of Wales switched the bag to her right hand, she appeared to glance to her side to check out William’s reaction as she held Cruise’s hand

Kate mirrored Cruise last night as he smiled and waved to screaming fans, beaming to show how in awe he is of the moment 

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As the Waleses walk through the door together, William placed one hand on Kate’s back in a loving gesture that also seemed to say ‘you’re mine’

When she takes her flowing skirt in both hands as they descend some steps, Cruise reaches one hand out to touch her elbow in an ‘awareness’ ritual, showing a gentlemanly sense of protection with a very light touch.

Cruise’s wide grin of beaming delight at the crowd shows how in awe he is of the moment and Kate’s permission. It really is a moment of ‘Permission Impossible’ as this would not be a normal body language moment for our leading royals.

Kate even glances to her side to check out William but as he appears busy, she then mirrors Cruise’s excited smile and waves to the screaming fans.

William is possibly flattered to have his wife led in by a superstar, but there is still a small follow-up gesture as they walk through the door together. He places one hand on Kate’s back in a loving gesture that also seems to say: ‘You’re back and you’re mine!’

A small notebook found in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (the national library of France) has turned out to be one of the most important Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart discoveries in decades.

The 44 pages of the notebook document composition lessons that Mozart gave in Paris in 1778 to Marie-Louise-Philippine de Bonnières de Guînes, a highly accomplished young aristocratic harpist. The manuscript was recognised in February 2026 by François-Pierre Goy, a curator in the library’s music department who recognised Mozart’s handwriting in the unattributed notebook. Laurence Decobert, a specialist in Mozart’s manuscripts, agreed with him and Armin Brinzing, director of the Bibliotheca Mozartiana in Salzburg, later authenticated the document.

The notebook lets readers follow Mozart’s teaching from one exercise to the next. It also preserves something that composer-centred histories often miss: the musical work taking place around him, in this case by a young woman.

Marie-Louise was the daughter of Adrien-Louis de Bonnières – a diplomat and talented amateur flautist. Her father commissioned Mozart’s well-known Concerto for Flute and Harp, K299, intending that father and daughter should perform it together.

Between May and July 1778, Mozart taught Marie-Louise composition almost every day. The recently discovered notebook contains exercises and seven short pieces for flute and harp. More significantly, it preserves the work of teacher and pupil on the same pages. Their musical hands are interwoven: Mozart proposes, corrects and develops ideas, while his pupil copies, completes and experiments.

The pages show composition being taught in real time through corrections, copied passages and ideas exchanged between pupil and teacher.

Listening beyond Mozart’s verdict

Mozart was not complimentary about his pupil. In a letter to his father, Leopold, dated May 14 1778, he complained that she had “no ideas”. A later letter was similarly dismissive of her aptitude for composition. Such remarks have helped determine how Marie-Louise has been remembered: as a minor figure in Mozart’s biography and the technically capable but supposedly uninspired daughter of his patron. The manuscript allows us to look beyond that verdict.

Several exercises in the notebook are entirely in Marie-Louise’s hand. Six of the flute-and-harp pieces are complete, although they begin from ideas supplied by Mozart. The seventh remains unfinished, followed by six blank pages – perhaps because her lessons ended when she married on July 26 of the same year.

It is impossible to tell from the notebook just how far Marie-Louise’s talent might have developed. However, it is clear from it that her education was not limited to playing the harp: she was seriously engaged in composition too.

Much of the musical life of women of Marie-Louise’s social class took place in a domestic setting. They learned to play instruments and performed for guests. Some also bought sheet music, commissioned works or hired professional musicians. These gatherings could also matter to professional musicians. A performance in a private home might bring a composer to the attention of a future patron or lead to a new commission.

Marie-Louise’s handwriting is valuable because it records her own part in the lessons. We can follow how she worked through the exercise, rather than relying solely on Mozart’s opinion of her. For many women, the surviving evidence is far scarcer – perhaps a single sheet of music or a mention in a letter.

The salon as a musical institution

This pattern resonates strongly with my own research into 19th-century European musical culture, particularly salons – private gatherings where musicians performed for and socialised with influential patrons, as well as patronage and archival musical networks.

As musicologist Rebecca Cypess argues in Women and Musical Salons in the Enlightenment, salons mediated between the public and private spheres. In her salon, the hostess was free to decide for herself who to invite and what music to play. This gave her real cultural influence at a time when official musical institutions offered women very few opportunities.

This influence depended on privilege. Marie-Louise had access to Mozart’s works thanks to her family’s wealth and status. Nevertheless, the music played in the homes of the elite contributed to the development of general musical culture, even if later historical studies associated it exclusively with the name of this famous composer.

The newly recovered compositions received their first public performance at the BnF on June 21 2026, played by flautist Mathilde Calderini and harpist Nicolas Tulliez. France Musique recorded the performance and later broadcast it.

It is easy to see why a newly identified Mozart manuscript has attracted attention among devotees of the composer. But the notebook also belongs to Marie-Louise. Her hand appears throughout its exercises, preserving a rare record of music-making that usually took place in private and seldom entered written histories.

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An investigative journalist in Northern Ireland has launched High Court action against the police over alleged unlawful attempts to identify a confidential source.

The reporter, who specialises in covering serious crime and paramilitary activity, is seeking damages from the PSNI for harassment and breaches of privacy and data protection.

A judge granted anonymity to the journalist, referred to as YZL, based on concerns about the threatening environment in which they work.

Proceedings centre on efforts to obtain communications data made back in 2014. Police acted covertly and made applications under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act aimed at identifying a journalistic source for a news story at the time, it is contended.

Lawyers for YZL stress that any request for material which could reveal a private contact must be justified by an overriding public interest.

Another journalist, former BBC Northern Ireland Home Affairs correspondent Vincent Kearney, has already been awarded £20,000 in damages against the PSNI and MI5 for unlawfully obtaining data from his mobile phone.

Mr Kearney, who now works for RTE, took a case to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal in London.

In September last year an independent review by Angus McCullough KC identified 21 unlawful uses of covert powers by police to try to uncover reporters’ sources.

His report related to up to eight journalists but found no basis for concerns that PSNI surveillance of journalists was widespread or systemic.

A separate lawsuit has now been brought against the Chief Constable on behalf of YZL.

Lawyers representing the reporter are seeking a declaration of illegality, an injunction and compensation for the alleged campaign of surveillance.

They also want full disclosure of any steps taken against their client.

Papers lodged at the High Court in Belfast claim a misuse of private information, along with breaches of both the Data Protection Act 2018 and Protection from Harassment (Northern Ireland) Order 1997.

During a preliminary hearing last Friday Mr Justice McAlinden granted an anonymity order after being told YZL’s work depends on being able to use confidential sources and ensure their protection.

The case was listed for a further review in early November.

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Football fans have not been allowed to drink in the stands for decades but Prime Minister Andy Burnham is in favour of changing the law

Andy Burnham has suggested he may look to remove the ban on drinking alcohol in the stands at football matches – which has stood since the 1980s.

The Prime Minister has claimed the law is “unfair” for fans, given that those who attend other sporting events are allowed to enjoy a pint from their seats. Burnham, a big Everton fan, is still a match-going supporter. He insists there is a case for ending the ban, with rugby and cricket fans all allowed to drink pints from the stands.

Burnham has long opposed the ban and said during his trip to the United States of America: “I don’t think it’s fair for football fans to be singled out in that way and I made that point. I think that legislation dates to an era where football was very different. And I do believe there is a case to remove that discrimination.

“There are different ways it could be done, perhaps on a trial basis. But I’m not going to back away from what’s been a long-held view of mine. I don’t see how it can be fair that some supporters of one sport can be treated differently.”

It was made illegal in 1985 due to concerns about hooliganism. The fan-led review of football governance in 2021 called for the ban to be re-examined and suggested piloting the sale of alcohol within sight of the pitch in lower-tier English football.

The potential change has been welcomed by the Football Supporters’ Association and the English Football League, but police suggested it would be “incredibly rash” to make changes without considering their impact on safety.

Farmers Voice 2026 will be held at Hexham Auction Mart on Wednesday, October 14, starting at 6pm.

The free event, organised by youngsRPS and The Farmer Network, will tackle the changing face of agriculture and the opportunities and challenges facing the next generation.

Harry Morshead, director and rural surveyor at youngsRPS, said: “There isn’t one route into farming, and that’s something we really want to explore at Farmers Voice.

“Taking on a family business brings its own opportunities and pressures, while for somebody trying to establish themselves independently, the challenges can be very different.

“Farmers Voice is about bringing those experiences together, asking questions and having an honest conversation about where farming goes next.”

This year’s event, themed ‘The Next Generation of Farmers’, will examine succession and routes into farming beyond the family business.

The panel will also examine lessons from farming overseas, bluetongue, emerging livestock diseases and opportunities for the next generation.

The panel will include The Sheep Game creator Cammy Wilson, Mr Morshead, Black Sheep Vets’ Kaz Strycharczyk, and farmers Will Riddington and Katie Andrews.

Adam Day, managing director of The Farmer Network, said: “Encouraging and supporting the next generation is fundamental to the future of farming.

“Whether someone is already farming, preparing to take over a family business or trying to find their own route into agriculture, we want them to come along and be part of the conversation.”

The event is open to farmers, students, new entrants and anyone interested in the industry’s future.

The audience can put questions to the panel, and supper will be provided.

Previous Farmers Voice events gave the farming community a forum to discuss issues affecting their businesses and the wider industry.

Entry is free, but places must be booked in advance.

Book tickets online at https://bit.ly/FarmersVoice26.

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.

Her daughter is dancing inside; she’s young, probably 13 or 14. Years later, recalling this moment from her adolescence, their daughter says: “Daddy would be on the door, Mummy would be handing out minerals [soft drinks] in the back”. It’s an ordinary scene of parental duty and care, except for two details: this was the mid-70s and Charlotte was a Protestant.

Charlotte didn’t convert and didn’t attend Mass. Instead, she went to Church of Ireland services, in a different part of Belfast, with her sister. Charlotte’s husband – I’ll call him Eoin – drove Charlotte there every week. Eoin attended Vigil Mass on Saturday evenings to ensure he was free on Sunday mornings to help his wife.

After Eoin’s sudden death, Charlotte continued to contribute to the local Catholic Church’s weekly offertory by asking her neighbour to take the collections envelope with her to Mass. When Charlotte died, eleven years after her husband, both her Church of Ireland rector and the Catholic priest came to the house to pay their respects. “I thought it spoke volumes about who my parents were and about their values”, their daughter said.

Their daughter shared these fragments of memory carefully, offering an account of her parents and their love for each other through stories of everyday devotion. The tenderness with which she spoke of them made the warmth of their life together tangible. At the height of the Troubles, 20 years before any meaningful discussion about ceasefires, coexistence was happening through small, supposedly unremarkable moments like a husband driving his wife to church, or two clergymen visiting a grieving daughter.

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The intimate sphere is never private alone. Domestic familiarity does not dissolve political division. Stories like Eoin’s and Charlotte’s are bruised by what is not said; heavy with uneasy compromise, asymmetrical sacrifice, emotional labour.
These are life histories marked by weddings without music (“a day to be got through”); baptisms without parents or grandparents; siblings attending different schools. Mixed marriage did not resolve the hostilities of Irish politics so much as translate them into the rhythms of daily life. Here, contradiction was negotiated through mundane ritual and strategic silence; acts of conciliation and maintenance.

Stories of forbidden love that ultimately triumphs over adversity are enduringly popular. In Ireland there is a particular local flavour to such tales of clandestine lovers, where a pair from opposite sides of the so-called divide translate national conflict into romance.

I understand the appeal of these stories. I’ve spent a large part of my life reading them, watching them, thinking about them. But the more I encountered these stories where political and emotional commitments seemed irreconcilable, the more I began to ask: what was life like for those who found themselves inescapably drawn to someone they shouldn’t be?

A more intimate history

Over the past several years, I’ve been leading a project to build an archive of oral histories documenting mixed marriage in Ireland. Interviews were conducted by Ruth Duffy, a research fellow at Queen’s University Belfast, for the project and this collection of intimate histories allows people to share their family stories in their own words.

Mixed marriage has long been made to bear symbolic weight far beyond the lives of the couples themselves. It is invoked as proof of peace-building, assimilation, coexistence or, more darkly, betrayal. But this archive tells a much more ambivalent story: that the messiness of romantic desire, filial love, political allegiance and religious duty could never be contained within the political scripts that have dominated the Irish story.

People have shared recollections that are vibrant, unexpected and bittersweet. I anticipated encountering stories marked by bigotry, intolerance and violence. These certainly exist. Many people and their families paid an enormous cost for their choice of partner.

People changed their names and couples were burnt out of their houses. Teenagers emigrated to get married and devout congregants were threatened with excommunication. Families were ostracised; mothers were coerced into putting their babies up for adoption; children were taken from their parents and placed in orphanages run by particular religious groups. People were killed.

These are not the cliches of a Troubles thriller but the realities of many people’s lives. The nature of the Northern Ireland conflict was terrifyingly intimate. In his poem ‘Wounds’, the late Michael Longley captures some of the desecration of a war that could see a man executed in his own home:

Shot through the head
By a shivering boy who wandered in
Before they could turn the television down
Or tidy away the supper dishes.

Amid these harrowing accounts, what lingers is the vitality of small things: the supper dishes, paper cups of squash and collections envelopes.

Textures, ambiguity and awkwardness

Perhaps the greatest surprise was the number of children who wanted to share their experiences of their parents’ – or even grandparents’ – mixed marriages.

Many of them voiced a similar impulse to share so “their parents’ story could be captured”; “their history is important for people to know, in a small way”.

For a researcher, the ethical demands implicit in listening to these memories cannot be overstated: you can hear that these are narratives shaped by love and pride. These are stories told with vulnerability and shared with hope. I feel that duty of care acutely; for this reason, all the names I use here are pseudonyms.

Despite the palpable affection in these intimate histories, they are not simple exercises in nostalgia. The tellers interpret and historicise their past, even as they offer it for curation.

A woman I’ll call Sarah expressed a “special kind of sadness” about the impact mixed marriage had on her parents and her family, “and because you’re a child, you don’t really understand”. These stories make painfully clear how society asked children to bear the burden of their parents’ marriages in a context of immense political discord and trauma. Adult children of mixed marriages frequently articulate an early intuition, a childhood sense, that something was amiss. These children don’t just inherit the political consequences of mixed marriage: they inherit its textures, ambiguity and awkwardness.

Things become most troublesome for mixed marriages when family life collided with institutions. Weddings, baptisms, schooling and funerals were especially fraught. In the words of one of our interviewees, these were instances that “made religion rear its ugly head”. Occasions that ought to have been a time for celebration and unity often prised open division with startling force. Photograph albums capture weddings where family members looked strained: “the worst thing that could possibly have happened had happened”.

I wonder how different our understanding of modern Ireland would be if we turned to family histories like these, rather than politicians and paramilitaries, to understand conflict and its legacy?

Some individuals recalled not just inheriting two traditions but actively inhabiting both in ways that neither community would approve of. One woman, May, shared an astonishing story about her father.

Asked to produce his birth and baptismal certificates before he could get married, the man was bewildered to discover that he had been baptised twice. Believing himself to be a lifelong Catholic, he learnt that he was baptised first in the Church of Ireland at four weeks’ old in Belfast’s St John’s Cathedral in 1912. In 1915, as a three-year-old, he was baptised again at St Matthew’s Catholic Church in the Short Strand.

Echoing so many stories about mixed life, these official records leave more questions than they answer. Over a hundred years later, his daughter May could only speculate why and how this had happened, attempting to make sense of institutional traces that seemed inherently paradoxical.

May’s grandfather was at war, fighting on the Western Front, when his son was baptised for a second time in 1915. May suggested her Catholic grandmother might have had her three sons baptised again in the Catholic Church to curry favour with her family. Unsure whether her husband would return from war, and raising six children by herself, her grandmother would have needed all the support she could get.

The emotional and social work taken to manage a cross-community family like this must have been endless.

Sarah shared some of the most distressing stories I’ve heard. The fourth and youngest child to her parents’ mixed marriage, she was their first and only daughter. Like many mixed families in Ireland, her parents had agreed to the common compromise that any sons born to the marriage would be baptised in the Catholic church like their father, and any daughters raised in her mother’s Evangelical church.

This did not protect Sarah’s mother from humiliation and heartbreak. When Sarah’s mother took her eldest son to the Catholic Church for his baptism, she expected to be welcomed and included in the service. She was his mother, after all. Instead, she was told to hand her baby over and sent to the back of the chapel while her son received the sacrament. This happened again with her next two sons. Three times she was made to watch from the back of the church as her sons were baptised without her.

When she had her daughter, Sarah, she was adamant that this would not happen again. As a girl, according to the uneasy but widespread Irish custom, Sarah ought to have been baptised in her mother’s church. What followed reveals how familial bonds can crumple under the weight of deeply held religious convictions. Sarah recalls her mother telling her that, when Sarah was six months old, her Catholic relatives “kidnapped” her and had her baptised without her mother’s consent. This time, her mother was not even allowed inside the chapel. Her father, Sarah reveals, “bent to peer pressure and the priests”.

Despite Sarah’s Catholic baptism, her mother fought hard to ensure that Sarah was brought up Protestant; her mother also “kept to her word” and sent the boys to the Catholic chapel every week.

Sarah’s household was a divided one, with the children attending different churches and different schools. They learned to pray in different languages; they were taught different histories; they played different sports. These practical accommodations created children who learned to move between parallel worlds, carrying a keen awareness of the selves they might have been under different circumstances.

These childhoods shaped by uneven concessions were defined by what Sarah called “unspoken boundaries”: rules children were expected to follow without ever fully understanding. Sarah used to attend Sunday School at the Evangelical Church she attended with her mother and, one week, her brothers went with her. When Sarah’s mother arrived to collect her four children, she was greeted by her sons sitting outside on the steps of the church, waiting for her. “Whatever had happened”, Sarah recollected, “they wouldn’t go in”.

Whatever had happened. The vagueness is telling. After all these years, Sarah still didn’t know. The silence and heaviness of that unknown hovers over so many of these narratives, carried in the image of three small boys sitting on some steps outside the church.

I return again to Charlotte, handing out her cups of squash. I think of her six children, each inheriting the afterlives of choices made long before they could understand them. For Charlotte and Eoin’s daughter, her parents were simply a “great example of how you can be yourself while compromising within your marriage and within your family”.

These families do not need their stories to be romanticised. They need them to be recognised. What mattered was not reconciliation in the abstract but the daily work of living together through contradiction and without resolution.

In the back of a parochial hall in Belfast, Charlotte was doing something both ordinary and extraordinary. She was making a family across a line that was meant to keep them apart. That labour – quiet, repetitive, unheroic – is part of Irish history too.

*Participants’ names have been changed to protect their anonymity.

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