History is our true novel, says Roy Foster, Ireland s leading historian. In An Irish History of Civilization, the world s foremost scholar of the Irish diaspora, Don Akenson, fuses history and fiction into an iconoclastic narrative of a people and their influence around the globe.
In a sprawling chronicle of civilization through Irish eyes, Akenson takes us from St Patrick to Woodie Guthrie, from Constantine to John F. Kennedy, from India to the Australian outback. In two volumes of masterful storytelling he creates ironic, playful, and acerbic historical miniatures - a quixotic series of reconstructions woven into a helix in which the same historical figures reappear in radically different contexts as their narratives intersect with the larger picture.
History is our true novel, says Roy Foster, Ireland s leading historian. In An Irish History of Civilization, the world s foremost scholar of the Irish diaspora, Don Akenson, fuses history and fiction into an iconoclastic narrative of a people and their influence around the globe.
In a sprawling chronicle of civilization through Irish eyes, Akenson takes us from St Patrick to Woodie Guthrie, from Constantine to John F. Kennedy, from India to the Australian outback. In two volumes of masterful storytelling he creates ironic, playful, and acerbic historical miniatures - a quixotic series of reconstructions woven into a helix in which the same historical figures reappear in radically different contexts as their narratives intersect with the larger picture.
But there is everything wrong with aspiring to something that is pure fantasy, and which talking about only causes constant anxiety to even moderate Northern Protestants.
Banging on about a united Ireland just to upset unionists is part of the Sinn Féin agenda. If we go on indulging them, it will end badly for all on our island.
Currently Sinn Féin is campaigning for a Border poll as a prelude to a process of pressure they believe will lead to a united Ireland.
We expect no better of Sinn Féin. But supporters of Ireland s Future also seem to be following a three-part fantasy road map as follows:
The Feeny Presybyterian who almost became Taoiseach
Rev James Irwin was also a fervent supporter of Home Rule.
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An early 20th century ecclesiastical split on the issue of Home Rule sparked a chain of events which led to a County Derry Presbyterian minister eventually turning down a run at the Irish presidency.
Rev. James Alexander Hamilton Irwin, born in Feeny and educated at Magee College in Derry, became a Presbyterian minister when he was ordained at Killead, County Antrim, in 1903.
He served the ministry for 23 years, but the love, but it was his actions in the years that followed that saw him forgo the love, fellowship and comfortable retirement such a stint usually provided.