Seamus Heaney: In some versions of the afterlife, the soul returns to haunt a place where the living person endured a particularly soul-marking experience. If this indeed happens to be the case, then the corridors of Junior and Senior House off Bishop Street, the bedrooms and classrooms, the refectory and study hall, the handball alley and deserted walks are thronging with invisible hosts, the shades of generations of boarders reliving the intensity and displacement of their adolescence in St Columb's.

And long, spectral columns of pale-faced youths must be passing every now and again down steps and alleys and along the wall of the city to Columb's Hall, the G-rated picture house where their faith and morals would be safe for a couple of hours outside the walls.