BBC True North – The First Generation (2020)

As Northern Ireland approaches its centenary in 2021, Stephen Walker meets some of the men and women who are as old as the state of Northern Ireland itself. In this heartwarming programme, Stephen encounters four women and one man born in 1921: Aileen Pollock, Martin Charters, Isobel Lavery, Eileen Sweeney and Mairead Liddy. Through conversations with them, he discovers how they all witnessed great social, economic and political change over the decades.

Martin Charters, who grew up in Shrigley, Co. Down, tells Stephen of his experiences as a tailgunner on a Lancaster bomber, taking part in dangerous bombing missions over Europe during the Second World War. As Stephen hears, the war was also a defining experience for Mairead Liddy from Warrenpoint, who served as a nurse on the frontline in London during the Blitz. She recalls her beloved brother Pat, who served in the RAF and lost his life over the Persian Gulf just as the war was coming to an end.

The contributors to the programme also share warm, affectionate and life-affirming stories of meeting their partners in the dancehalls of the 1940s and 50s, where romance and love blossomed and marriage beckoned. As Aileen Pollock explains to Stephen, it was love and marriage that took her off to a very different life in Hong Kong during the 1950s.

With its stories of childhood, the world of work, the life-changing impact of war and of love and marriage, The First Generation is a timely reminder of the challenges this generation faced across the decades – and what we can learn from their long lives.