Sir, - I grew up on Belfast's Falls Road in the 1960s and was delighted to read Pol O Muiri's excellent Irishman's Diary (January 19th) about Robin Livingstone's book The Road: Memoirs of the Falls.
While I agree that we need balance and that life in West Belfast before the Troubles was certainly not a bowl of cherries, I am not certain that we need a Frank McCourt-style dash of realism. This would consign the Falls Road of the 20th century to 30 years of political violence and 70 years of poverty and neglect. It wasn't like that and I suspect that Limerick was the same.
At the risk of "saccharine sentimentality", I plan to avoid the showers and stoically remember the queues at the Clonard and Broadway cinemas, the crowds on the way home from the dances on a Saturday night, Paddy Morgan playing Alex Higgins in the West Belfast Social Club, the Falls Baths and the Falls Library, Jim McCourt's return with Olympic bronze and our street party to celebrate Glasgow Celtic's victory in the European Cup. - Yours, etc.,
Martin McDonald, Whitehall Road, Terenure, Dublin 6W.