When we sat down as a programme team to consider making a new set of Radio Ballads about issues of our time, we realised there are few issues that dominate our recent history as much as The Troubles in Northern Ireland. For years the situation seemed unsolvable, but the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 seemed to offer the prospect of hope. We wanted to try to tell the history, catalogue some sense of the horrors that have occurred over the past thirty years, yet offer a positive view of the future; one which would reflect the feelings of both sides of the religious divide.

After conversations with interviewer Sara Parker, we decided that the common thread between the communities was music and that the majority of our interviews would be with musicians, drawn from both Protestant and Catholic backgrounds. With this in mind, we contacted an organisation called Different Drums of Ireland, which seeks to bring together people from both sides through the two symbolic drums of each tradition: for the Unionists, the enormous Lambeg drum - the 'beating heart of Ulster' - and for the Catholic tradition, the bodhran, whose rhythm is so loved by traditional musicians.

We then approached musician, broadcaster and friend Gerry Anderson, who’d played in the showbands and travelled the length and breadth of Ireland during The Troubles. We also talked to songwriter and veteran peace and Civil Rights campaigner Tommy Sands, and these two astonishing interviews formed the thread of the story and helped lay out a history of The Troubles. Sara then conducted a sensitive interview with Steve Travers of the Miami Showband, a group gunned down by terrorists in 1975 in an incident that sent shockwaves through musicians across the whole of the land.

Amazing interviews were matched by superb songs, written by Tommy Sands, Julie Matthews, Jez Lowe and Karine Polwart. We had talked at an early stage about finishing the Ballad on a positive note, which would offer hope and maybe resound across the religious divide ... perhaps even inspire. Tommy had written a song called Carry On and performed it outside Stormont to the politicians trying to hammer out the Good Friday Agreement, urging them to carry on talking. He took with him a choir of schoolchildren, both Protestant and Catholic, so we decided to try to recreate the atmosphere of that song with our own children’s choir of mixed religions from two schools close to Tommy’s studio. We also invited a bodhran player and a Lambeg drummer to join in. When Lambeg drummers Roy and Richard arrived, their enormous drum wouldn’t fit through the studio doorway, so Richard had to play his drum outside, late one damp February evening.

Although the content in earlier parts of this programme can be understandably harrowing, we hope you find the finale uplifting. Heartfelt thanks is due to everyone who gave their time, their trust and their goodwill to this programme; songwriters, musicians, the people who listened and guided us, but especially to the people who told their stories on tape. This Ballad would not have been possible without you.