So while the 1840s was clearly a period of fundamental crisis, I would say that was more a socioeconomic crisis which, later, was interpreted as a historical precondition for political crisis. It was not a mass national movement at the time. There’s some political upheaval, with a movement of revolutionary insurgency in the late 1840s, but that was a minority affair. The 1840s was largely a period of social and economic dislocation. This sense of trauma, of fissure, of apocalyptic wrongness at that time, is this a little how Ireland felt in the second half of the 1840s as well? Since my aim was to relay a diversity of perspectives - never was that diversity greater than in the fallout from the period that you’re referring to, in other words, never was it greater than in the aftermath of 1968. Seamus Deane, like McCann, is also from Derry, but became a literary scholar, both a critic and historian, and doesn’t share McCann’s worldview. Roy Foster was just in training as a southern Irish university student. By comparison, Eamonn McCann, who wrote War and an Irish Town, was an angry youth. We then skip forward, in chronological terms, to Conor Cruise O’Brien, who, at the start of The Troubles, was a fully fledged adult. I picked Joyce because he provides an essential cultural hinterland to debates about Irish nationalism, society, and politics. Bearing in mind the works I’ve chosen - by that stage, James Joyce was dead. When you come to the early 1970s, for example, there’s a hugely strong feeling…Ībsolutely. It’s interesting you mention the generational point because Ireland’s sense of itself, perhaps even more than other societies, seems, to me, to be extraordinarily influenced by when we are talking about.

I certainly didn’t see it as my business to use them as vehicles for expressing my views, which would deliver an entirely different result. I thought a range of opinion could best be captured by representing these very different authors. They are of different generations, as well. There are common preoccupations in these texts-obviously there must be because the subject is Ireland-but the figures I’ve chosen come at the subject with very different baggage. What I aimed for, in a way, was diversity. Could you offer your thoughts about how you came to choose these five books, the underlying rationale that drew you towards them?Īnyone who seeks to represent a subject, by means of just five books on it, is going to be faced with an overwhelming problem. You’ve chosen one collection of essays, one novel, and three very different Irish history books. Foreign Policy & International Relations.

War and an Irish Town by Eamonn McCann