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By Belfast Telegraph
4.6
2828 ratings
The podcast currently has 893 episodes available.
The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

A senior DUP member set out their explicit support for violence - just weeks before the Good Friday Agreement. Files released in the National Archives in Kew have revealed the details of a politician’s comments to a government official - the individual wasn’t named but there were clues to their identity. It’s also been revealed that First Minister David Trimble was being paid thousands of pounds more than the deputy first Minister, Seamus Mallon, a year after the agreement – despite the roles being equal. Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Sam McBride. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Lauren Bradford-Clarke grew up believing her mother Lesley had taken her own life before finding out the truth – her father was a murderer. She was told her mum Lesley took her own life, eventually being told it was part of a ‘suicide’ pact with a man, Trevor Buchanan – the husband of the woman who would eventually become her stepmother. That woman was Hazel Stewart, how had been having an affair with Lauren’s father, Colin Howell. Ten 18-years after the deaths, Colin Howell walked into a police station and confessed to murdering them, implicating Steward as his partner in crime. Dr Lauren Bradford-Clarke, now a criminologist, spoke with the Belfast Telegraph’s Claire Williamson. This episode of The BelTel originally aired in February 2026. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In September 2000 a body was found in a bog in Fermanagh. This was not a so called ‘bog-body’, sacrificed long ago - the body turned out to belong to local bus driver David Sullivan, who had gone missing 17 months earlier. There were things that were particularly disturbing about this discovery – the first of which was that Sullivan was the subject of dozens of allegations of child abuse, the second was that his body had no head. Olivia Peden is joined by Belfast Telegraph’s Andrew Madden and former DCI Norman Baxter. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

When many people hear the words ‘Holy Cross’ - short for Holy Cross Girls Primary School – the words take them back to a dark time. Holy Cross is a Catholic School in a loyalist area, Upper Ardoyne or Glenbryn. In 2001, community tensions boiled over and led to loyalist residents protesting nationalist parents from Ardoyne taking their kids to schools through their part of the area. That protest became notorious for its viciousness. Two clerics, one Catholic, one Protestant became synonymous with the events of Holy Cross and attempts to resolve them. They were Fr Aidan Troy and the Rev Norman Hamilton. Fr Troy joined Ciarán Dunbar in the BelTel studio with the Rev Hamilton down the line. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998, but certain areas of Belfast felt little effect of peace. In September 2001, the Holy Cross dispute became one of the most disturbing flashpoints of the post-Agreement era. Holy Cross was a Catholic Girls' primary school but sat a few hundred yards inside the loyalist Glenbryn estate, in an area known as Upper Ardoyne. Within days of the school year starting, the world watched in horror as demonstrations involving abuse, spitting and a bomb attack ensued. What legacy has the Holy Cross dispute had, what impact did it have on the children involved, and why did protesters feel that they had no other choice? Ciarán Dunbar is joined by Allison Morris and Olivia Peden. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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