Forty Shades of Green

Extract

It has often occurred to me that if all the books which have been written in the recent past about ‘modern Ireland’ were laid end to end, it would be a very good thing. Certainly the Irish cannot complain of under-exposure. Constantly looked upon as something rather strange and yet attractive, this island has, especially in the past five years or so, been the subject of a considerable number of critiques, both external and internal, which are frequently united by nothing more substantial than the deliberate desire to misunderstand what it is the Irish are up to, and why. In addition, the illusion—created partly by the country’s useful geographical isolation, and partly by the mistaken belief that we speak the English language—that Ireland is a subject which can be rapidly and conveniently assimilated, encourages superficiality. It is difficult to know which is the more offensive: the kind of book which portrays Ireland as a country ruled by the expertly-wielded clerical black thornstick, straining to escape from its thraldom to alcohol and internecine warfare, or its alternative, the book about the brave new Ireland striding manfully into the twentieth century and in the process of escaping the various forms of thraldom already mentioned because it has at long last learned to embrace liberal, middle-class, Anglo-Saxon virtues.