Volume 37, Number 12 · July 19, 1990
A Tale of Two Nations
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
Ulster: Conflict and Consent
by Tom Wilson
Basil Blackwell, 330 pp., $49.50
In the opening paragraph of a review published in The New Republic, Professor Denis Donoghue said, 'Tom Wilson's book is ostensibly an academic study of this situation, but in fact it is an essay in propaganda. He is a Unionist, and writes in support of that position.' In the last paragraph of the same review, Donoghue describes Ulster: Conflict and Consent as 'a serious, thoughtful book,' a view that is rather hard to reconcile with his opening dismissal. But these things tend to happen when Irish Catholics (Nationalists) review books by Ulster Protestants (Unionists), and vice versa. It is all part of the Irish situation. Irish troubles regularly wreck the rail line between Dublin and Belfast. But they also disturb communications in more subtle ways, even at high intellectual levels.
Review, 4637 words
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