I’m used to outsiders mangling Belfast's history. So Say Nothing was a breath of fresh air | Rachel Connolly

The adaptation of Patrick Radden Keefe’s book isn’t flawless – but it doesn’t airbrush the complex, messy story of the Troubles

I will admit that when I heard there was to be a TV adaptation of Say Nothing, based on Patrick Radden Keefe’s book of the same name, released on Disney+, I thought: “Oh no.” I had images of Florence Pugh or whoever got up in a red wig and painted-on freckles, prancing about the Ormeau Road with a petrol bomb in one hand and an Irish tricolour in the other. I pictured plummy English or haughty southern Irish accents with a few mangled Belfast “nowwws” thrown in for colour.

On reflection this wasn’t really to do with the book, a sober and well-researched account of a brutal murder. But more because there can tend to be a slightly goofy way of depicting, and interacting with, the complexity of the history in the place where I am from. Perhaps especially of late.

Rachel Connolly is a writer and author of the novel Lazy City

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I’m used to outsiders mangling Belfast's history. So Say Nothing was a breath of fresh air | Rachel Connolly

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