Volume 20, Number 7 · May 3, 1973
Mocking the Irish Gods
By John Horgan
States of Ireland
by Conor Cruise O'Brien
Pantheon, 336 pp., $7.95
The Story of Ireland
by Conor Cruise O'Brien, by Maire Mac Entee O'Brien
Viking, 192 pp., $12.95
The idea that Britain is responsible for all Ireland's wrongs, from the price of beef to the partition of Ulster, is one that dies hard in the breasts of nationalist and Catholic Irishmen. Most Irishmen of this species, in fact, manage to combine a belief in the invincibility of their own race with the conviction that Britain has permanently shackled them to her chariot wheels. It is not so long ago that I witnessed, in the senate of the Irish Republic, a debate on Ireland's decision to join the European Common Market which was characterized chiefly by a stream of vilification of the Ancient Enemy, who (or so it appeared) had tricked and misled us at every turn of the economic road.
Review, 3143 words
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