Raising him in a comfortable middle-class home, Nicky Campbell's Scottish Protestant family cared for him and nurtured him as their own, while remaining open about the fact that he'd been adopted. His father - an ex-army man - and his mother helped him to a good school and a good university. Nicky rarely thought of his birth parents until a combination of an imploding marriage and a chance meeting with a private detective led him to track his mother down. Nick Campbell movingly recalls their reunion, evoking all the complex and deep-seated emotions that their newly found relationship provoked. And as they became closer, Nicky discovered far more than he expected. Not only did he have a sister, Esther - with whom he would later forge a strong bond - but his natural father was a comiteed Republican whose own father had served in the IRA at the time of Michael Collins.