Thought for the Week: The other

Ian Kirk-Smith reflects on recent events and 'the other'

by Ian Kirk-Smith 20th November 2015

David Bleakley’s father worked in the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast and once put rivets into the hull of the Titanic. His son followed in his footsteps and did an apprenticeship in the ‘yard’. Their family home was a small terrace house in working class East Belfast. Then, in his twenties, David Bleakley left the shipyard to study economics at Ruskin College, Oxford.

In Oxford he became friends with an academic who was also from East Belfast. C S Lewis, however, lived ‘up the hill’ in the fresher air of a leafy middle-class neighbourhood. Despite their different backgrounds and paths to Oxford, both shared a curiosity for the world, a dry Ulster sense of humour and a faith.