As well as a probing examination of a country increasingly torn apart by religious fanaticism, Alan Croft's Belfast: Tears and Laughter 1957-1977 is a beautifully composed autobiography which serves as a tale of innocence lost, as Croft documents the journey of a young man coming to terms with his adolescence in the midst of a culture of neverending violence. And yet in the end it is Croft's lighter touch that resonates: the human moments scattered along the way. The beleaguered postman menaced by a pack of thuggish dogs; the man who decides if he can't have a convertible, he'll just...