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In The Name Of Peace: John Hume In America

RTE Player, until September 6 Powerful documentary tracing the 30year journey of Nobel Prize winner John Hume to get recognition and support in America for his methods of peaceful protest in Northern Ireland. His determination to interest Senator Ted Kennedy, Tip O’Neill and finally successive American presidents in the value of his approach is told here through contributions from those close to him — including Seamus Mallon, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair, John Major — and archive footage.

There is a fascinating clip of a young Hume facing off against a British solider during what began as a peaceful march across Magilligan Strand in Derry and ended in a tense confrontation, the week before Bloody Sunday in 1972 (left).

That Hume’s understanding of the twin needs for peaceful protest and economic investment took 30 years to pay off — in the Good Friday Agreement — is a reflection of the political and social climate of the time, but also testimony to his quite remarkable determination and the depth of his belief. That Hume himself was not well enough to take part in this is terribly sad, but Seamus Mallon’s closing words: “Inside was a man who had something big to do. There is a greatness about his political life. I would put him in the same breath as Parnell, Daniel O’Connell” — is a very fitting tribute. Any Human Heart Channel4.com William Boyd adapts his own novel here, producing a four-part drama that takes in one man’s life, and a big chunk of the 20th Century.

Sam Claflin, Matthew Macfadyen and Jim Broadbent play the various stages of Logan Mountstuart, who starts as a talented, rather impractical young writer, and ends up a lonely old man rattling around a cheerless house in France with only chunks of memory for company.

This is a thoughtful reflection on the passage of time, and the inevitable changes and losses that accompany all of us on our journey from start to finish.