The Troubles: Ireland's Ordeal 1966–1995 and the Search for Peace

by Tim Pat Coogan

Just across from the ambassador’s residence in Phoenix Park lies Aras an Uachtarain, the residence of the President of Ireland. It used to be the home of the British viceroys who once ruled the country. During the visit of President Kennedy to Ireland in 1963, I had stood beside him as he planted a sapling in the garden of the Aras, in the shade of a gigantic oak which Queen Victoria had planted. Victoria’s visit had taken place during the potato famine which had driven Kennedy’s ancestor from tiny Dunganstown in Co. Wexford to America, and the Kennedy dynasty. One would have had to be utterly deficient in a sense of history not to have felt the significance of that little tree-planting ceremony – or not to have experienced an eerie sensation at the symbolism of the fact that the sapling later died. Was it killed by the shade of Victoria’s oak, or did a wind blow from Dallas?