It’s baffling how the British press continues to label us Irish as UK citizens ... My blood boils whenever I read online polls declaring that we Irish have the “sexiest accent in the UK.”
A recent enough Daily Mail poll of sexy accents in the UK stated, “When it comes to sexy accents, fans of celebrities including Cillian Murphy, Vogue Williams and Joanne McNally will be unsurprised to learn that the Irish accent reigns supreme.”
Do they not “do” history lessons anymore in the UK? Thankfully most other European countries don’t frequently make this mistake from my first-hand experience. But I do know some Americans who are convinced that Ireland was part of Brexit, but I’ll forgive them that slip-up because those guys are usually Trump voters.
But on the European continent, nine times out of ten, it is a different story. Just like the U2 song, it was a place where the streets have no name. On a dusty countryside road in Northern Spain, as I walked the Camino de Santiago, an elderly woman’s eyes lit up like flashbulbs at the mere mention of Ireland.
“James Joyce!” she exclaimed. I grinned.
“Oscar Wilde!” I then gave her a thumbs-up signal.
“Samuel Beckett!” Then she added, “Bono!”
It was very touching how this octogenarian, who couldn’t speak English, was able to convey such deep affection for Irish literature [and modern Irish music] by simply uttering those few names with great reverence as if they were the Holy Trinity.
Ireland has produced a disproportionate number of notable writers for such a small nation. There’s probably a plethora of reasons — such as years of oppression, the lack of job prospects before the Celtic Tiger, and the sheer boredom from being marooned on a small island in the North Atlantic with year-round miserable weather.
While, without a doubt, it’s a great advantage to be from a predominantly English-speaking country. It’s hard to imagine too many Irish authors being widely translated and read if Gaelic was still the main native tongue.
Even so, it’s impossible to fully elucidate why Ireland breeds wordsmiths in the same fashion that Brazil produces dazzlingly skilled footballers. After all, we Irish are “impervious to psychoanalysis” according to Sigmund Freud. But we Irish are also a remarkably candid race when it comes to confessional writings.
You could list a couple of dozen Irish writers from the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century and still accidentally overlook someone significant. It’s easy to forget the universal classics Dracula, Gulliver’s Travels and Tristram Shandy were all written by Irishmen.
The fantasy novel The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe would almost certainly be overlooked because its Irish author C.S. Lewis is remembered as being an Oxford don and he was born in Belfast, which technically makes him British too.
But there are many other Irish-born authors from the Republic claimed as British too, such as Iris Murdoch and Cecil Day-Lewis, who just happened to be the official British Poet Laureate between 1968-72; even though he is probably more well-known these days as the father of Oscar winner Daniel Day-Lewis.
It’s hard for certain Irish public figures to maintain their national identity on a global level because the British media has always had a propensity to claim them as one of their own. Even true-blue Dubliners like Bono, Saltburn star Barry Keoghan and Olympic champion Katie Taylor, who won a gold medal when boxing for Team Ireland, have all been described as British by respectable media outlets, such as the BBC and The Daily Telegraph.
I wrote two of my Irish Sunday Mirrors columns a few years ago on the matter when the actress Saoirse Ronan and golfer Rory McIlroy, who was born in Northern Ireland but opted to represent the Republic in the Olympics, were both claimed by British media as loyal subjects of their queen … even though a Republic, by definition, can’t have a monarch! [Sure only earlier this year GQ magazine declared Irish actor Barry Keoghan was “one of ours”! Tut-tut.]
I’d be here all day naming Irish stars claimed as British heroes, but they certainly pushed the boat by describing Stephen Roche as the “first English speaker” to win the Tour de France.
The English newspaper columnist Melanie Philips caused huge controversy in 2017 with her ridiculous statement, “Ireland itself has a tenuous claim to nationhood, having seceded from Britain as the Irish Free State in 1922.”
But Philips did hit the proverbial nail on the head because she was only saying out loud what many of her compatriots think too — that they don’t perceive Ireland as a “real” country per se.
The English are not the only culprits here: I remember one American critic describing the semi-autobiography novel The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists written by Dublin-born author Robert Croker — who wrote the under the alias Robert Noone — which was published posthumously, as “a classic of modern British literature, that ought to rank with the work of Thomas Hardy, D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce…”
By the same token, I doubt anybody would dare describe Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell as a seminal classic of modern French literature! Looking again at that above critic quote, it appears he was including the quintessential Dubliner James Joyce as British!
These blurring of the lines, such as arguing an Irish writer or actor or musician is British, does a great disservice to the Irish arts in general. You can let it slide when the artist in question came from a supposed Anglo background or was born in the 26 counties before the country became a Republic or was born in Northern Ireland. But at least seven or eight times out of ten, they too perceive themselves as Irish and not British.
You don’t see Ireland claiming British or American authors with Irish-born parents — if we did, I’d fill many pages listing them. Even the British hero The Duke of Wellington, who ended up becoming Prime Minister a little over a decade after his victory at Waterloo, was a Dubliner by birth!
I’ll leave the last word on this topic for now to Iris Murdoch, who often appears on lists of great British authors. She once stated: “Well, I’m Irish anyway, that’s something.”
