We've brought this week's Red Lines out of the studio to a very comfortable corner of Belfast's

Linenhall Library. It's book week in Northern Ireland and we're here to talk to three authors

about their latest offerings and the theme that unites them is the ongoing debate about the

constitutional position of this place. We'll talk about the content of your publications in a moment, but I want to

open the conversation up by asking you about the process of writing and publishing these books. Claire,

you're dealing with a big subject. Why did you choose to do it in a book? It was one of those

pandemic books.

We had a lot of free time and I had these ideas on my mind for many years.

And for the book, because it was during lockdown,

I just started to walk and talk with my friends. And I didn't initially plan it to be a book.

But we started to visit a lot of the sites of the 1798 rising. And it provoked

all these really interesting conversations. And at some point I realized we actually have a

collective story to tell here. So the journey became the book? The journey became the book. It was a

literal walk. Maliki, I think this is your 11th book.

So you're well-practiced in handling the challenges involved.

How did writing this book compare to your previous experiences?

And essentially this, I suppose, was a faster book than the others,

partly because it grows out of the previous work so a lot of the preparatory thought had already been done.

The whole project is like an extension of the work that I've done in journalism for years and

it really is a work of, I think of it as a work of journalism based on reflection

memoir but interviews and going out and doing markings almost covering a story.

So it's really like a work of journalism which instead of doing a story in an afternoon

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