evidence: Clare Stevens (née Diamond), MA 1979, shares her experience of coming to St Andrews during the height of the Troubles. She recalls the contrast of the safe, quaint cobbled streets with the "strife-torn province" of home. [...] So, it was easy to immerse myself in student life and forget what was happening at home. Talking to my parents meant queueing to use the single telephone cubicle in the vestibule of Hamilton Hall, and conversations were usually full of gossip, not updates on the political situation or the latest atrocity. I can easily relate to my fellow Northern Irish St Andrean Martin Doyle’s recollection in his book Dirty Linen of how he only found out about a particularly horrific murder in his home village in South Down when one of his cousins travelled over to be his guest at a university ball and told him about it.