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Don Mullan's top 10 books on heroes

This article is more than 17 years old

Don Mullan is the bestselling author of Eyewitness Bloody Sunday, the book that was credited as a primary catalyst in the establishment of the new Bloody Sunday Inquiry, and which inspired the 2002 award-winning film Bloody Sunday, on which Mullan worked as co-producer. He is currently working on a film script for his latest book, Gordon Banks: A Hero Who Could Fly. Here he chooses his top 10 books on his other heroes.

"Of the books I have written, compiled and edited, the one I enjoyed most is my latest book - part-memoir, part-eulogy - on the great England goalkeeper, Gordon Banks. The book is a heartfelt expression of gratitude from an Irishman for his English boyhood hero. As a dyslexic boy I thought I was stupid, but after seeing Banks play for England in the 1966 World Cup final he became my inspiration. In 1970, just a few weeks after he became a global icon after his save against Pelé in Mexico, my father magically arranged for me to meet him while he was on a pre-season tour of Ireland. In my book I write: "Throughout my adult life, I have had the opportunity to meet many notable personalities of the 20th century ... but nothing, absolutely nothing, other than an audience with God, will ever surpass the pure joy my father gave me as a boy, the day we met Gordon Banks." And it's true! These, though, are books by, or about, some of my other heroes."

1. Quiet Strength by Rosa Parks

I interviewed Rosa Parks in June 1998. En route, at JFK airport, a friendly black TWA duty manager asked me if I was traveling to Detroit on business. When I told her I was going to interview Rosa Parks she took my boarding pass, asked me to wait, and returned a few minutes later with a first class ticket. "If you're going to see Ms. Parks," she said, "We've got to take care of you." Next day, Ms. Parks smiled when I related how her refusal to give up her Montgomery bus seat in 1955 had led, 43 years later, to a black woman offering a first class seat to a foreign white man traveling on a US commercial airline. Quiet Strength is Rosa Parks' inspiring memoir of how her faith, hope and charity inspired her with the courage to confront American racism and set in motion a chain of events that brought Martin Luther King Jr. to the fore and changed a nation - indeed, the world. Rosa Parks, who passed away in October 2005, was a humble woman who altered history.

2. Rabble-rouser for Peace: The Authorised Biography of Desmond Tutu by John Allen

In 1982 I helped to organise an international conference on world peace and poverty, to mark the 800th anniversary of the birth of St Francis of Assisi. Desmond Tutu, then secretary general of the South African Council of Churches, was one of the first to accept an invitation, subject to the return of his passport, recently confiscated by the apartheid government. I first met him in 1984, the year he won the Nobel peace prize, and we have been friends since. John Allen's biography, due out in October, will undoubtedly be a definitive work for decades to come. Interviewees include former South African presidents FW de Klerk and Nelson Mandela, and US president Bill Clinton. In 1984 I drove Tutu from Dublin to Belfast and was overwhelmed by his gentleness and generosity. Unquestionably, his compassionate handling of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission checked a potential bloodbath of revenge. A wonderful human being.

3. Long Walk to Freedom: The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela

On May 10 1994, together with a friend from Ireland, I was swept along by a tidal wave of humanity into the grounds of Union Buildings, Pretoria, for Nelson Mandela's inauguration as President of the Democratic Republic of South Africa. His autobiography tells the story of the institutional racist brutality that failed to break the spirit of a nation. Amazingly, a man who during the Thatcher/Regan era was officially considered a terrorist presided over a miraculously peaceful transition of power. Mandela is, and will forever remain, the beacon of all Africa and a source of inspiration for the earth's most abused and exploited continent.

4. The Story of My Experiments with Truth: The Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

Following the effective killing of the Northern Ireland civil rights movement by the events of Bloody Sunday, I, along with many others, was confronted with the choice of violence or non-violence. Ultimately, I went in search of an alternative to violence and inevitably read the autobiography of Gandhi. I was particularly touched by his openness to read and discuss the gospels at the behest of Christians he met as a young barrister in South Africa, and by his hurt at their unwillingness to reciprocate by reading the ancient texts of Hinduism, in particular his beloved Bhagavad Gita. Gandhi's respectful dialogue with Christianity and other faiths has much to teach our world, where similar dialogues are urgently required.

5. Story of a Soul: The Autobiography of St Thérèse of Lisieux

Apparently, Robbie Williams and I have one thing in common. Our favourite saint is a young French mystic, Thérèse Martin, who died in 1897 aged just 24 in an enclosed monastery in Lisieux, Normandy. I first read her autobiography in 1975 after which I hitchhiked to visit her shrine. What captivated me was her breathtaking honesty. As a child struggling with the unrecognised condition of dyslexia, I identified with her struggle to cope at school. She wrote: "I have often heard it said that the time spent at school is the best and happiest of one's life. It wasn't this way for me. The years I spent in school were the saddest of my life." Thérèse recognised that even as small and limited human beings, we all have the potential for greatness. There is a breadth and spiritual profundity to her writing; her guiding motto, powered by a generous and loving heart, was to do "ordinary things in an extraordinary way."

6. Universe: The Definitive Visual Guide, ed Martin Rees

One of the most exciting books I ever read was a Ladybird book called The Night Sky. It exposed me to the wonders of the cosmos. Gifted thinkers such as Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein are mesmerizing, but their contemplation of time and space has led them on a journey of modesty. The universe revealed to them that true education should teach us how little we know, not how much. Does God exist? I don't know. Who does? But there is an intelligence and order evident in the universe that, I believe, eludes the explanation of even the most gifted intellects. So, the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever you are, you, too, are one of my heroes. This book is a wondrous and fathomless feast.

7. Amelia Earhart: The Sky's No Limit by Lori Van Pelt

On my first visit to the National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC, I rushed past the 1903 'Wright Flyer' and Lindburgh's 'The Spirit of St. Louis' to a small, red, single-engine Lockheed Vega which my father, as a boy in 1932, had watched land in our hometown of Derry to make history. Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly the Atlantic solo, piloted it. My father glimpsed her through the crowds who thronged to see her. It was emotional standing beside the actual aircraft he had seen as a boy. His stories ignited within me a love affair with America's Lady Lindy who disappeared without trace in the south Pacific on July 2 1937. Van Pelt's biography reignited my admiration for a fearless pioneer who not only broke barriers and pushed back frontiers but also helped spearhead commercial aviation and the advancement of woman.

8. The Girl in the Picture: The Kim Phuc Story by Denise Chong

1972 was a momentous year in my life. On January 30 I witnessed the events of Bloody Sunday. On May 4, then aged 10, one of my closest friends, Richard Moore, was blinded by a rubber bullet on the edge of our school grounds. One month later, on the far side of the earth, a nine-year-old Vietnamese girl, Kim Phuc, was photographed by Nick Ut of the Associated Press, running naked and terrified from her burning village. Years later I was to meet the girl in the picture and we became friends. In 2001 I brought Kim to Ireland to meet my friend Richard and a schoolgirl he was mentoring who lost her eyesight in the 1998 Omagh Bomb. Together we made a 10-minute documentary for Ireland's TV3. Chong's book movingly tells how Kim Phuc's image changed the course of the Vietnam war. She writes: "In the voiceless cry of the girl in the picture is the silence of guilt. "

9. The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Deaths by Helen Prejean

George Bush believes in the death penalty. As governor of Texas he condemned scores of inmates to lethal injection. Statistics suggest, however, that some 7% of those on America's death row are innocent. Helen Prejean is America's most famous Catholic nun following Susan Sarandon's Oscar-winning portrayal of her in the film Dead Man Walking. Death of Innocents tells the heartbreaking story of two men whom Prejean accompanied to the execution chamber and who she believes were not guilty of the crimes for which they were killed. She has been to Dublin twice now and on both occasions has stayed with my family; she's feisty, compassionately fair, and fun. She argues persuasively that even one innocent death is too many and that while those guilty of murder must be punished, the death penalty reduces a civilised society to legalised and institutional barbarism. "The readers of this book," says Prejean, "will be the first 'jury' with access to all the evidence the trail juries never saw."

10. Pelé - The Autobiography

I saw Pelé from a distance recently in a Dublin bookshop, signing his autobiography. Crowds had gathered through the night to see him; I smiled when I read the promotional poster: 'GOD is a four letter word - Pelé!" and thought, "If Pelé is the god of footballers then Gordon Banks is the god of goalkeepers." Pelé was the hero of my best friend, Shaunie, who died in 1976, aged 21, in a car crash. We spent many happy days kicking and catching a ball as our alter egos. I'm currently involved in building a monument to Banks' save against Pelé outside Stoke City's Britannia Stadium and, I hope, Pelé himself will come to unveil it. In the days before commercialism contaminated the game, Stoke City's most successful manager, Tony Waddington, referred to soccer as "the working man's ballet'. I'll drink to that.

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