A Belfast Child : My true story of life and death in the Troubles

Set on the Glencairn estate in loyalist west Belfast in the 1970s, A Belfast Child is a memoir of growing up during the Troubles. It is a first hand account for readers interested in loyalist west Belfast and the Troubles. The author, John Chambers, was born on 16 July 1966 and grew up in Glencairn.

Chambers says he was raised in a loyalist family. He says his father was a UDA member and his grandparents were loyalists from Sandy Row. His mother, a Catholic from the Falls Road, left when he was about three, and he says he was told she had died. He says he looked for her for about 25 years, and the book describes his journey to Preston to meet her.

Chambers also recalls losing his father when he was 13, after which the family was split among relatives. He describes a childhood illness, osteomyelitis, that led to sixteen operations on his leg. The second part of the book follows his teenage years in mod culture and loyalism, and his move to London in the 1980s.

In A Belfast Child John Chambers tells his own story, and a testimonial from Chambers on Tom Henry's website says the book was written with Tom Henry as ghostwriter. Chambers also runs the Belfast Child website, where he keeps a blog and lists of Troubles related films, books, documentaries and deaths. This is the paperback edition, published by John Blake Publishing on 3 September 2020, with 304 pages.