When I told my teachers I was going to the New University of Ulster to study a new-fangled degree in media studies, I was told I shouldn’t go. “No pupil of mine is going to a dump like Coleraine,” was the blunt instruction.

My mother said much the same; she had ambitions for me to study law. Like most Catholic working-class parents, she believed education was the ticket to a better life. The more they pressured me to go somewhere else, the more I dug my heels in. Coleraine it was: a soulless plate-glass university in the middle of a bog.

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My mates were nearly all from Derry and – incongruously – we shared our floor in halls with Reggie Smith, suspected by many of being a British spy, and the inspiration for Guy Pringle in the Balkan Trilogy, written by his wife Olivia Manning (a great read by the way). Smith was a visiting professor, and would often roll back........

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