Keith Middlemas on the history of Ireland

• Ireland: Land of Troubles by Paul Johnson
  Eyre Methuen, 224 pp, £6.95, October 1980, ISBN 0 413 47650 2
• Acts of Union by Anthony Bailey
  Faber, 221 pp, £4.95, September 1980, ISBN 0 571 11648 5
• Neighbours by Conor Cruise O’Brien
  Faber, 96 pp, £2.95, November 1980, ISBN 0 571 11645 0
• Ireland: A History by Robert Kee
  Weidenfeld, 256 pp, £9.95, December 1980, ISBN 0 267 77855 4

An Englishman addressing himself to Irish history and contemporary politics ought always to bear in mind John Stuart Mill’s provocative remark, that it was not Ireland but England that was the exception: ‘Ireland is in the mainstream of human existence and human feeling and experience; it is England that is one of the lateral channels.’ Of the authors under discussion, the first is an Englishman who, in The Offshore Islanders, has anatomised just that lateral channel, the second an Anglo-American journalist, the third a leading Irish politician and writer of uniquely varied experience, and the last the broadcaster and historian reponsible for the current remarkable television series on Ireland. If they have a common theme, it is that Irish history is characterised by violence, ignorance, bigotry, and an obsession with a heroic past, and, though none makes European comparisons, their books suggest that it is the history of Sicily, the Basque country or Corsica which might illuminate Ireland’s long relationship with England.