Trespasses author reveals hopes for Northern Ireland’s future as Channel 4 drama arrives on screens

This article first appeared in Radio Times magazine.

For all the terribly consequential religious divisions in Northern Ireland, Catholic and Anglican services share an almost identical prayer. Known as the ‘Our Father’ (or the Lord’s Prayer), it contains the lines: “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us”.

“It’s certainly the first prayer I learnt in childhood,” remembers the novelist Louise Kennedy (inset, below), who was born in Holywood, County Down and grew up in Dublin and Kildare. “And it’s a word that’s not really used in normal speech. I remember thinking – ‘trespasses, isn’t that a mad word?’ – it’s sort of a sin, but more than that.”

Around five decades later, Kennedy repurposed the plea for divine forgiveness as the title of her 2022 debut novel; Trespasses was shortlisted for the 2023 Women’s Prize for Fiction and is now the source material for a four-part Channel 4 drama. The story is set in Northern Ireland in 1975 – during the Troubles of the Catholic-Protestant conflict – where single Catholic school teacher Cushla and married Protestant civil rights lawyer Michael begin an intense affair.

“That’s a religious and moral trespass,” says Kennedy. “But there’s other trespassing going on in the book, along class lines and even geographical lines, because Cushla goes to parts of Belfast she wouldn’t normally.”

So, in essence – and this may be hard for some younger viewers to believe – it’s the story of how loving the wrong person could be a death penalty? “Absolutely,” confirms the novelist. “There were tarrings and featherings and assassinations because of relationships. There was constant judgement and suspicion.”

In the book, the violence suffered by one supporting character for having a so-called “mixed marriage” [Catholic-Protestant] is shocking but, on screen, we flinch at the camera’s clinical examination of swelling, bruises, scabs, stitches. Kennedy thinks the brutal detail is important: “When I was about 12, we were sent to go and find something in the school library to read and I actually sat down with the newspaper. And it was the time that the trial was going on of the Shankill Butchers [a gang of loyalist paramilitaries who kidnapped, tortured and murdered a number of random civilians, both Catholic and Protestant].

“There were very graphic descriptions of what happened to victims and I just sat and read and read and I think that will never leave me. Of course, you could ask whether someone should have stopped a 12-year-old girl from looking at all that stuff!”

The constant threat of death in Trespasses may, Kennedy acknowledges, have a personal as well as historical element. She started writing fiction in her early 50s in 2019 when recovering from surgery for advanced skin cancer: “So to take my mind off the fact that I might be dying, I tried to write 1,000 words a day. The cancer came back as stage 4 in 2021 and I had immunotherapy which got out all the melanoma. I probably should be dead – but I’m not.”

Trespasses is full of cultural references that, in the TV version, means vintage clips of Mastermind and The Generation Game. “TV in Belfast then was so British. I grew up with Dick Emery and Morecambe and Wise. On TV on a Sunday, they had every sport you could imagine – men’s hockey, netball, everything. But there was never a mention of Gaelic football or hurling. And I think it made the nationalist population feel almost like we were mad or invisible. Our community was completely absent from public life. But it also made people who were interested in those things – or the Irish language – feel subversive.”

However, dramas set in Northern Ireland weren’t exactly popular fare with British viewers either, I suggest. “I could absolutely believe it,” says Kennedy. “When it was on the news every night – assassinations, bombs, hunger strikes – you could understand why people didn’t want more of it in drama. But I think there’s distance now and also an audience that knows nothing about it at all and is interested.”

Trespasses is part of a rise of Northern Irish culture that includes Anna Burns’s 2018 Man Booker Prize-winning novel Milkman and a stream of other big TV shows. I offer Kennedy a TV quiz question – where is Mastermind filmed and produced? “I’ve no idea.” The answer is Belfast. “Really? No way!” Also made there were Game of Thrones and Line of Duty.

“That has been amazing,” she acknowledges. “People working on Trespasses had also made The Fall, Blue Lights, Derry Girls. So there’s a huge base of experience.”

Despite such visible evidence of what was promised as the “peace dividend”, Kennedy is among those who feel that promises have not been kept in other areas. “There are huge issues still. A lot of time the government doesn’t function, so there has been money available from Westminster that wasn’t spent.

“The services, like the NHS, have been run into the ground. The Civil Rights movement started in the first place because people – and mainly the Catholics – had more limited access to housing and education. The Catholic areas never caught up. In some places, the deprivation is worse than it was.”

Does Kennedy think the peace will hold in Northern Ireland? “I certainly hope so. I think a border poll is inevitable and will happen sooner rather than later. [Under the Good Friday Agreement, a referendum on a united Ireland must be held if the Secretary of State believes a majority of people in Northern Ireland would vote for unification.]

“When I was growing up, it was at least 60 per cent Protestant but now it’s 51-52 per cent Catholic. So, the tipping point has been reached. And I would have worries about the possible return of violence in the event of a border poll.”

Kennedy’s new novel Stations follows a pair of teenagers in Ireland and London from the 1980s to the start of this century and will be published next September. No doubt readers and viewers will hope she explores even further the complicated history of her birthplace.

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