When Kevin Met Sadie: The books that 'opened the way for a generation'

Joan Lingard, the author of the Kevin and Sadie book series, grew up in East Belfast

If you're among the thousands of people over six decades who've read Joan Lingard's novels, you'll know immediately who Kevin and Sadie are.

The compelling central characters in a series of five books captured the idea that young people could overcome violence and bigotry and strike out for a better future.

They humanised the impact of prejudice, revenge and territorial division during the conflict in Northern Ireland, and broke new ground by bringing the issues to a young audience.

Starting with The Twelfth Day of July, published in 1970, the books tell the story of Kevin McCoy and Sadie Jackson, who are from opposite sides of the community in 1970s Belfast.

Joan Lingard's manuscripts at Linen Hall Library in Belfast

They meet as teenagers, and pursue a romantic relationship, despite the opposition of many around them and the increasing violence during the early years of the period known as the Troubles.

My own memories of reading the novels, in the early 1990s, remain vivid and helped to shape my early understanding of what was happening in Northern Ireland, alongside broadcast news bulletins and newspapers.

I was intrigued to find out about Lingard's literary and societal legacy. It was an interest that led producer Camellia Sinclair and I to make the documentary When Kevin Met Sadie for BBC Radio 4.

Archived interviews with Lingard, who died in 2022, revealed her ambition to write a book at the outset of the Troubles which was "balanced, not on one side or the other".

Two years after The Twelfth Day of July, came the second, and possibly best-known of the series, Across the Barricades.

Lingard spoke of her interest in the "transition of adolescence", which she likened to the "crossroads of life", where people decide "are you going to carry on with the ideas and ideals of your parents or are you going to forge new ones of your own?"

Kevin and Sadie considered this question in dramatic, and traumatic, circumstances.

Kersten England said she remembers her mother receiving "the odd razor blade through the post" over the controversial book series

I asked Kersten England, the eldest of Lingard's three daughters, whether her family's character traits were recognisable in Sadie.

"I think there might be bits of us," she said. "We were all energetic, lively, quite bright."

Kersten described how her mother grew up in east Belfast.

Lingard's own mother was a Christian Scientist.

Kersten said that meant her mother "always had a sense of not being either Catholic or Protestant, and being in some senses an observer of all these debates that were going on".

The novelist spent most of her life living in Edinburgh and faced some hostility because of the issues in the books.

Kersten remembers she "had the odd razor blade through the post".

Publishers also weren't initially sure about the commercial prospects for the novels.

Kersten explained: "They used to say, don't talk about sex, politics or religion. She was going for two of them."

But the series became a huge success, selling more than 1.3 million copies worldwide.

The three other novels in the series focus on Kevin and Sadie's lives after they leave Northern Ireland, finishing with Hostages to Fortune, published in 1976.

Jan Carson, one of Northern Ireland's most successful writers, said Joan Lingard "opened the way" for a generation of young people

Jan Carson is one of the most successful writers from Northern Ireland in recent years, whose novels set in the region include The Fire Starters and The Raptures.

I met her to look at the manuscripts of the Kevin and Sadie novels, which are kept at the Linen Hall Library in Belfast.

"Joan Lingard definitely opened the way for a generation of us who were young people when these novels came out, particularly from this place," she said.

"A novel is an incredibly safe place for a young person to learn, and to process how they feel and think about different issues.

"For me, it's also important that she was a woman writing about these big themes."

Today, the stories are studied in classrooms in Northern Ireland.

Pupils at the Integrated College Dungannon spoke to me about Kevin and Sadie

Integrated schools, which are set up to educate children from different backgrounds together, did not exist in Kevin and Sadie's time.

Pupils from Years 9 and 10 at Integrated College Dungannon said that Across the Barricades made a big impression on them.

Reuben said: "When we started, I didn't understand much about the issues Kevin and Sadie had to deal with, but reading it made me understand a lot, and the struggles they had to have."

Chloe thought the books showed how important it was to learn about the conflict "so you can make sure to try not to let it happen again".

"Now when you meet someone, what background you're from isn't really the first question you ask," Faith said.

She wondered what Kevin and Sadie would make of Northern Ireland if they returned after the Good Friday Agreement, the peace deal that brought the conflict to an end, in 1998.

"They might find it strange at first – but if they were born after the agreement like we were, they'd find it normal, and better."

A sixth Kevin and Sadie novel?

So was there ever a possibility of a sixth novel where Kevin and Sadie came back to Belfast, in peacetime?

Kersten England reflected that the couple would have had to have been in their forties if that book had been written.

She said: "My mother probably didn't write that, because there wasn't ever the right time and there would have been a huge gap since the last novel."

Lingard wrote dozens of other novels, for adults and children.

She said she didn't want to think of her two most famous creations as being "middle-aged or older".

"That's not Kevin and Sadie. They are as I imagined them at the very beginning – buoyant, laughing, running along the streets hand-in-hand."

You can listen to When Kevin Met Sadie on BBC Radio 4 at 16:00 GMT on Tuesday 21 October, or afterwards on BBC Sounds.