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“... to a jubilant crowd. ‘I have been in prison for fifteen years for something I didn’t do,’ Gerry Conlon shouted at the cameras. ‘For something I didn’t know anything about. I am a totally innocent man. I watched my father die in a British prison for something he didn’t do. He is innocent, the Maguires are innocent. Let’s hope the ...”

“... The monolith which has cracked is one which straddles the Irish Sea. Hill’s book and Conlon’s make this clear. After their arrest and trial, and the brief flurry of protest, there was a long period, reaching well into the Eighties, when the sense of injustice was little more than a private hurt, its barbs sunk deep only in the flesh of family ...”

“... in my hands, I spent a long time pondering the implications. For almost fifteen years Paul Hill, Gerry Conlon, Paddy Armstrong and Carole Richardson had insisted they were innocent and had been framed by the police. I recalled that Sir Michael Havers, who led for the Crown in the 1975 trial, had reasoned to the jury that if the Four were innocent, a ...”

“... In fact the right was introduced in 1986 in response to miscarriages of justice in the 1970s. Gerry Conlon, for example, one of the Guildford Four, was deprived of food, clothes and sleep, and was beaten by the police until he signed statements confessing to bombing the Horse and Groom and the Seven Stars: ‘When I signed them, I believed I would ...”

“... life picked over, but having it picked over by sneering toffs is very grim indeed. Paul Hill and Gerry Conlon have separately told me the same story of how, during their trial for the Guildford bombings, they used to stare at Sir Michael Havers QC, their prosecutor and chief tormentor. Havers had a nervous twitch and when the defendants succeeded in ...”