It is one of four counties in Northern Ireland with a Catholic majority, with 58% of the population coming from a Catholic community background. County Armagh remains officially used for purposes such as a Lieutenancy area – the county retains a lord lieutenant who acts as representative of the British Monarch in the county. By June 1971 the situation had deteriorated after the killing of three soldiers and the shooting dead of two men by the Army.

The car featured in this series is a Dodge Stealth, while the Smokey and the Bandit films introduced two generations of the Pontiac Trans Am.

Despite lying in the east of Ireland, Armagh enjoys an oceanic climate strongly influenced by the Gulf Stream with damp mild winters, and temperate, wet summers. Currently the county is covered for local government purposes by four district councils, namely Armagh City and District Council, most of Craigavon Borough Council, approximately the western third of Newry and Mourne District Council and a part of Dungannon and South Tyrone Borough Council, centred around Peatlands Park. As a teenager, McConville cut through a field to get into St Oliver Plunkett Park, the home ground of Crossmaglen Rangers GAC, to avoid “getting hassle” from soldiers in the town. The Bandit helps Angel face off against some shady characters smuggling stolen silver ingots hidden in the carnival.

While there is a police presence – “they would regularly be up at the church with speed guns” – it’s unlike other areas, he says. You think we would have got there by now, 25 years on,” says Oisín McConville, a former Crossmaglen and Armagh footballer.A Bandit impostor ( Gerard Christopher) lands the real Bandit (Bloom) in jail, but he needs to break out so he can deliver a futuristic car safely to Governor Denton ( Gary Collins). Ancient Armagh was the territory of the Ulaid (also known as Voluntii, Ultonians, Ulidians, Ulstermen) before the fourth century AD. Paul Muldoon (1951– ), born in County Armagh, poet, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and the T. The life they are living in comparison to the life that guys like me had, when we were growing up at that age. But talks between John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), and Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein, along with secret contacts with the British Government, began to form the basis for a new peace initiative.

It was his first time ever driving into Crossmaglen: “It was bizarre as I didn’t really know where I was going because I would have walked the roads, flew into a field and then walked on to another road.The British army helipad has disappeared and a windowless army bunker that backed on to the police station has been replaced with a bread making factory. In association football, the NIFL Premiership, which operates as the top division, has one team in the county: Glenavon, with Portadown, Annagh United, Armagh City, Dollingstown, Loughgall and Lurgan Celtic competing in the NIFL Championship, which operates as levels two and three. Brian Bloom stars as a younger version of Bo "the Bandit" Darville, the character originated by Burt Reynolds in Smokey and the Bandit (1977) and Smokey and the Bandit II (1980). The real measure of change is reflected in the lives of his three children: “They’re at an age now where, if they want, they can walk up the town on a Friday after school to get an ice-cream or do whatever they want to do. British Army numbers and installations in the region were reduced and security procedures gradually relaxed.

And above all, it is a story of betrayal, murder and a shocking miscarriage of justice, as empires crumble, friends turn on friends, and the good times come screeching to a halt.The south Armagh historian looks impatient waiting for us outside Northern Ireland’s most fortified police building and darts across the Cullaville Road when we pull up. The bombing campaign of 1974 included attacks on pubs in Birmingham, Guildford and Woolwich in which many civilians died alongside off-duty soldiers. The county was administered by Armagh County Council from 1899 until the abolition of county councils in Northern Ireland in 1973. Macha is also said to have been responsible for the construction of the hill site of Emain Macha (now Navan Fort near Armagh City) to serve as the capital of the Ulaid kings (who give their name to Ulster), and is believed to be the high place from which the county takes its name.