Book excerpt: As the composer of some of Ireland's best-loved songs, not to mention a host of global hits, Phil Coulter has been a mainstay of Irish cultural life for decades. But this is a position that has been hard won, often in the face of extraordinary personal and political upheaval, most of which has, to date, been kept hidden from public view. Heartfelt and wry, meditative and entertaining, Bruised, Never Broken is the story of the author's remarkable rise from modest beginnings on the streets of post-war Derry to the summit of the global charts, as a composer and confidante to a host of the era's biggest stars, such as Van Morrison, Luke Kelly, Cliff Richard and Sandie Shaw. Poignantly, it is also a hymn to the place that made him, a city as complex and troubled throughout Ireland's middle decades as any on Earth, yet a source of constant inspiration and consolation.