We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland

by Fintan O'Toole

It takes a lot of practice to achieve this kind of perfect purity: a lie that has no relationship at all to a truth.

Formulae of words were being written down by officials on what the Irish referred to as non-paper and the British called angel paper – documents that had no status, that could be disowned or made to disappear but that occupied the liminal zone where possibilities might germinate.