Roy Foster: evaluation

Transcript context

…John Stuart Mill once wrote this in a letter: “I know tolerably well what Ireland was, but have a very imperfect idea of what Ireland is.” Is that still true? Was it ever true? It’s true of many people. It’s interesting you quote Mill, who wrote a wonderful essay called England and Ireland, which reflects, I think, that opinion. He also said something which I’ve often quoted, which I like very much, which is that Ireland is in the mainstream of European history, whereas England is in an eccentric tributary. I think that’s very true, and a lot of what we’ve been saying today, Tyler, seems to me to bear that out, from the 17th century on. What Ireland was, I think, is something that is also, in a sense, up for grabs, where we’re trying to reenvision it, we’re trying to revise it, we’re trying to reexplain it. Something I wrote long ago, which has been quoted once or twice, is that the best history is written when we realize that people acted in terms, in belief of, in expectation of a future that was never going to happen. And I think that’s very true of — well, it’s true of the histories of most countries, but very true of the history of Ireland. The expectations in which the revolutionaries acted in 1919–21 were of a future that didn’t happen. The expectations of unionists and imperialists in Ireland, of which there were many in the late 19th century — they acted in terms of a future that was never going to happen either. We all act in terms of a future that’s never going to happen, but that imagined future is what dictates the way in which we behave. I think, in a sense, John Stuart Mill’s very honest admission is relevant to that as well. As you probably know, Oscar Wilde once wrote to William Yeats, “We are a nation of brilliant failures, but we are the greatest talkers since the Greeks.” With so much Irish success today, how will that image have to change? Is Ireland culturally prepared to be one of the countries that’s doing better than all the other countries?…

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