Londonderry William Cook
Tourists stayed away during the Troubles but now they’re back again to marvel at one of the most spectacular walled cities in Europe, writes William Cook
I’m standing on the ancient walls of Londonderry, amid a crowd of sightseers, watching the marching bands of the Apprentice Boys Parade, and I’m thinking to myself, ‘Blimey! How this place has changed!’ When I first came here, in 1994, this was a city under siege. The IRA and their Loyalist adversaries were still active. Paramilitary murder was routine. No one here would have dared to dream the Good Friday Agreement was just a few years away. The fragile peace that followed has now lasted 21 years, and during that time this historic city has been transformed.
I’d been back here several times in the intervening years – not enough to know Derry well, but enough to see how much it’s altered. New shops and cafés have sprung up, old buildings have been spruced up, but above all it’s the mood that’s shifted. After 30 years on the front line of a virtual civil war, Derry feels like a place that’s waking up from a bad dream.
The new Peace Bridge across the River Foyle is the boldest manifestation of this seachange, linking the (mainly Protestant) Waterside with the (mainly Catholic) city centre. For locals this bridge is symbolic, but also practical. For visitors, the big peace dividend is that you can now walk around the walls. Tourists stayed away during the Troubles, but now they’re back again, to marvel at one of the most spectacular walled cities in Europe.
These walls are integral to the troubled story of this city, and the parade I’ve come to see today. As oldies may already know, on 18th December 1688 13 apprentices shut the city gates against the Jacobite army of James II. The resultant siege lasted four months, thousands died of hunger, and since 1689 the relief of that savage siege has been marked by a parade of marching bands, on the second Saturday in August every year.
Inevitably, this Protestant parade was a focus for tension during the Troubles, but whatever went on before, today it feels like a cultural celebration rather than Sectarian triumphalism. For me, it sums up how Derry has been reborn. What was once a warzone has become a weekend destination, one of the most attractive cities in Ireland – or the British Isles.
For any newcomer to this embattled city, the first problem is what to call it. Originally called Derry (by Irish Catholics), it was renamed Londonderry (by British Protestants) when it was granted to British planters in 1613. Officially it’s still Londonderry, but colloquially it’s more often Derry, maybe because Derry is less of a mouthful. There’s no easy answer to this dilemma, save to try to take your cue from whoever you end up talking to.
A walk around the walls is a great way to get your bearings. The Catholic Bogside lies down below, marked by some stunning murals. You Are Now Entering Free Derry proclaims a sign on a gable wall. In 1972 this was the site of Bloody Sunday, when British paratroopers killed 13 unarmed, innocent civilians. The Free Derry Museum documents this tragedy, and the harrowing events that surround it. The Tower Museum provides a wider view of this sombre story.
After all that blood and thunder, Saint Columb’s Cathedral is a peaceful respite. Built in 1633, it’s a beautiful building, full of relics of Derry’s turbulent past, including a cannonball from the siege. It’s a parish church as well – no wonder it feels so homely. How nice to discover that Cecil Frances Alexander, who wrote Once in Royal David’s City, There Is A Green Hill Far Away and All Things Bright & Beautiful, used to worship here.
I was back in Derry for Frielfest, an annual celebration of the work of the great Irish playwright, Brian Friel. Born in Omagh in 1929, Friel spent the first half of his long life in Northern Ireland, and the second half in the Republic. Perched on the Irish border, Derry is a perfect spot to perform his plays, and the work of other writers who inspired him.
This festival is the brainchild of Sean Doran, an affable theatre director who grew up in Derry. His company, Arts over Borders, mounts plays in unusual venues, in places with shared identities. On the walls of Derry I heard Niall Cusack recite The Iliad (Friel loved Homer) against a background din of drums and flutes, overlooking the Bogside.
The Peace Process has reunited Derry with its natural hinterland, Friel’s adopted Donegal. It’s only a few miles away, but in the bad old days crossing the border used to be a bore. Nowadays it’s easy – so easy, you hardly notice. On Killahoey Beach in County Donegal, we heard Maxine Peake recite The Odyssey, Part Two. On Magilligan Beach in County Londonderry, we heard Imogen Stubbs recite The Odyssey, Part Four.
These are rehearsed readings rather than full-blown performances, but Doran books some big names. In the pretty seaside town of Moville, we saw Stanley Townsend and Orlad Charlton enact Friel’s The Yalta Game,
but the highlight of my trip was seeing Lorcan Cranitch, Tamsin Greig and the mesmeric Alex Jennings enacting Friel’s dark masterpiece, Faith Healer, in four different venues around Glenties. Glenties is the model for Ballybeg, the fictional village where Friel set so many of his plays. Instead of interval drinks, we shared a barbecue on Portnoo Pier in Inishkeel.
We finished up in Greencastle, where Friel ended his days. After a spot of lunch in a fantastic little seafood restaurant called Kealy’s, I walked along the waterfront, past a windswept children’s playground, to the ruined castle that gave Friel’s last resting place its English name. Looking out towards the wide Atlantic it felt like standing on the edge of nowhere, but County Londonderry was just a short ferry ride away, across the bay.
There’s a sobering postscript to this story. A few days after I filed this report, dissident Republicans detonated a car bomb outside Derry’s neoclassical courthouse. Mercifully, no one was hurt. Does this invalidate what you’ve just read? I don’t think so. Derry has changed tremendously since I first came here, at the tail end of the Troubles. I feel safer now in Londonderry than I do in London. But it’s a reminder that peace here is a process, not a settled state.