“A toy machine gun that belongs to Nice Adam up the road. That gun gets first prize. Shiny colours, painted onto tin like a clockwork Christmas decoration. Own a machine gun, you own the world.”

HIMSELF IN EXILE: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY IN MANY VOICES

Published by Knives, Forks & Spoons Press

An English boy finds himself caught in a civil war in the 1960s-70s, in Northern Ireland. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, doesn’t see the difference between the sides and most of all doesn’t want his dad to die.

Philip Davenport’s autobiography is written from any child’s point-of-view, as “you”. But this isn’t just one story, it’s many stories. Woven around it are other people’s testimonies, stories of those who were also children during the Northern Ireland conflict. And here too are the wounded warriors: ex-soldiers and ex-paramilitaries. The full interviews (extracted in the book) are below as a permanent online archive.

Different lives co-exist, contradict, make their myths together, all in the eye of a sniper with a toy gun.

PROJECT FUNDED BY ARTS COUNCIL ENGLAND

Eamonn Baker, peace worker: “This juxtaposition of autobiographical and transcribed audio, this interweaving working its spell… off-kilter cruelty and a grim comic edge… A child at the mercy of this merciless adult world.”

INTERVIEWS

The wee children

Alan

Danny

Dessie

Dinker

Joe

Richard

Roisin

Tracey

Terry

The warriors

Anonymous Fusilier

Anonymous Paratrooper

Soldier B

Soldier C

Greenjacket Lee

James

Lee

Liz

Rifleman Michael, a chosen man