Education: On the second last page of this interesting book there is a striking quote from one of Northern Irelan"s integrated education stalwarts, a Protestant by upbringing: "Segregation has damaged Protestants, Unionists, more than Catholic nationalists.
It was their [the Protestants'] state and many still don't credit the reality of Irish nationalist culture as anything but a deliberate affront to them, a form of opposition. All this is fed by separate schooling."
There are many similarly revealing statements in what is not so much a history of integrated education - now not far off its 20th birthday - but more of a documentary comprising some 40 interviews. These are with a broad range of participants - parents, teachers, governors, pupils and pioneers - and a few enemies.
Filleted interviews can be frustrating - especially when some of the speakers are anonymous. One craves the chance to see and hear the interviewees. But O'Connor has sliced her transcripts skilfully into six chapters celebrating a remarkable but still contentious achievement. By 2002, there were 15,000 children in integrated schools, 4.5 per cent of the school population. Brian Lambkin, once a teacher in the very first integrated school, Lagan College, states: "What we can say confidently now is that it can be done. You can educate Protestants and Catholics and others together, under the same roof, to a satisfactory level. There is no going back from that." Enemies, such as Sammy Wilson of the DUP and Monsignor Denis Faul, are given their say and O'Connor convincingly undermines the simplistic notion that if Catholics gave up their preference for their own schools and attended state schools all would be well.
The book has some surprises: for example, some of the pioneering parents who created integrated education were often as interested in mixed-ability teaching in a non-sexist comprehensive school environment as they were in educating Protestants and Catholics together.
O'Connor finds that recently parents have tended to send academic children to the segregated grammar schools while using the integrated schools for their less academic offspring. She also notes the burgeoning phenomenon of "silent" integration, of a sort, as more middle-class Catholic children attend the traditional Protestant Grammar Schools.
These statistics and the undoubted success of the schools give grounds for hope. But uncertainties remain: the "fractious" peace process is one, and the likely fallout should Martin McGuinness manag to end the 11-plus examination, is another. There is a long way to go before a shared childhood will be possible for a majority rather than a minority of citizens of Northern Ireland.
O'Connor is not impartial on the issue: integrated education is nothing less than "a political necessity, if there is to be a better future for us all".
Bernard Adams is a biographer and critic. His biography of Denis Johnston appeared in 2002
A shared childhood: the story of the integrated schools in Northern Ireland.
By Fionnuala O'Connor. Blackstaff Press. 196pp, £9.99