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Luck and the Irish: A Brief History of Change, 1970-2000

Not the place it used to be

R. F. Foster
Penguin, 240pp, £20,

Paul Bew

Wednesday, 17th October 2007

Paul Bew

But there is no escaping Foster’s sharp eye for the hypocrisies of modern Ireland. He is superb in his demonstration of the fundamental determination of the Southern state not to be seriously inconvenienced by its troublesome Northern nationalist protégés. The electoral humiliation of Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein in the Irish republic this summer is further proof of the accuracy of Foster’s analysis. This does not mean, as Foster is well aware, that Anglophobia is extinguished. One obvious proof is the sheer lack of gratitude to the British state which has accepted that Dublin would not take on the burden of the North and that therefore it will be stuck with all the ideological and financial costs of a long and messy entanglement. The form of Anglophobia whose remarkable recent exponent was Charles Haughey (prime minister intermittently between 1979 and 1992) is in the Irish case often a species of self-importance; a particular vision of national greatness which in turn exalts those who participate in it. Foster’s passages on Haughey are among the most brilliant and witty passages in the book — again, as Foster is well aware, Bertie Aherne is a very different type of politician and — up until this point, at least — a consummate interpreter of the tides of Irish public opinion. With this book, Foster reaffirms his status as the outstanding chronicler of modern Irishness. As the German ambassador to Dublin recently discovered to his cost, Dublin likes to talk about itself just as much as Foster claims, but it is less happy to be subject to sceptical scrutiny. It will be interesting to see the reaction to this book.

Professor Paul Bew’s Ireland: The Politics of Enmity, 1789-2006 is published by OUP, £35.

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