Troubles' '˜Survivors' to share their stories in new TV series

Entitled ‘Survivors’, the programme will feature nine people over three episodes revealing how their lives and the lives of their loved ones were changed forever by violence.

The first episode features Mary Hannon-Fletcher, left paralysed after a sectarian attack, Tommy Larkham, who witnessed the killing of a friend in a pub shooting, and Peter Gibson, whose father was shot dead because of his professional ties.

The trio reflect on their personal loss and injury and how they have dealt with, and continue to deal with, bereavement and physical and emotional injury.

In 1975 Mary Hannon-Fletcher was a 17-year-old living on the Springfield Road in Belfast. She was walking home along the Grosvenor Road with the man she had been with on a date to the cinema when a gang opened fire on them from a passing car.

Now a lecturer at Ulster University Coleraine, her injuries left her paralysed and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of her life.

Thomas Larkham was in the Legahory Inn in Craigavon on April 23, 1977 with his friend Patrick Devlin, who was a doorman in the pub.

He was standing next to the 72-year-old when he was shot in the head by a UVF gunman.

Also in the first episode of ‘Survivors’ Peter Gibson tells of the moment he had to wash the forensic chalk marks off his father’s driveway after he was murdered by the Provisional IRA.

On October 21, 1993, John Gibson was shot dead at his home in Newtownabbey because he was a company director with Henry Brothers, who carried out construction work on security force bases.

Series producer Jonathan Golden said: “The simple but profound aim of this series was to let a few victims and survivors reflect on the impact of the Troubles upon their lives.

“They are of course very powerful accounts of injury and loss, but also and crucially, of extraordinary courage and resilience.”

• Survivors is on BBC One NI next Tuesday at 10.40pm.