How Britain Ends: English Nationalism and the Rebirth of Four Nations

by Gavin Esler

drinking Guinness and whiskey with a group of Irish politicians. One of them was the then Irish foreign minister, the affable Brian Lenihan. We discussed how historical events could achieve mythical significance way beyond the facts – the 1745 Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, Crécy, Agincourt and Ireland’s Great Famine. Very unwisely I tried to put the Famine ‘into context’ by pointing out that Ireland was not alone in suffering in the 1840s. Across Europe these years were known as the ‘Hungry Forties’. France was hit by several famines. The 1840s of Dickens’s London was a far from pleasant place. My drinking companions went silent. Brian Lenihan patiently and politely ‘had a word with me’. I was in my early twenties and ignorant. He generously forgave my bad manners. I learned something and apologized. Ms Patel, a senior British government minister, hasn’t and didn’t.

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