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Roy Foster

Published podcast speaker

Claims
22
Episodes
1
Shows
1
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What Roy said.

22 transcript-backed records

01 / belief

I think 1886 was probably the last moment when, conceivably, there could have been united Ireland between the increasingly different Northeast and the rest of the island, with an autonomous parliament on the Canadian model within the empire, which I suspect would have disengaged itself over the next 50 years by peaceful steps, as indeed the Irish Free State after the Irish revolution disengaged itself from the Commonwealth by peaceful steps.

“I think 1886 was probably the last moment when, conceivably, there could have been united Ireland between the increasingly different Northeast and the rest of the island, with an autonomous parliament on the Canadian model within the empire, which I suspect would have disengaged itself over the next 50 years by peaceful steps, as indeed the Irish Free State after the Irish revolution disengaged itself from the Commonwealth by peaceful steps.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

02 / belief

I think given what you see in other countries — and you’re absolutely right; it’s I think unusual for it to be so — but I think there is a far lesser degree of resentment and expressed bigotry against incoming people from different cultures in Ireland, partly because those people themselves become rather quickly what is called the New Irish.

“I think given what you see in other countries — and you’re absolutely right; it’s I think unusual for it to be so — but I think there is a far lesser degree of resentment and expressed bigotry against incoming people from different cultures in Ireland, partly because those people themselves become rather quickly what is called the New Irish.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

03 / observation

The original inhabitants remain, one could say, in a far stronger position than in many of the areas of the British Empire, where they are effectively either enslaved or wiped out. But the point is really that what’s happening in Ireland in the 18th and 19th century is, as I’ve said earlier, a kind of dispossession.

“The original inhabitants remain, one could say, in a far stronger position than in many of the areas of the British Empire, where they are effectively either enslaved or wiped out. But the point is really that what’s happening in Ireland in the 18th and 19th century is, as I’ve said earlier, a kind of dispossession.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

04 / belief

I don’t think Jack Yeats — I think what you’re buying with a major Picasso or a Matisse is a statement of a change in the history of art that affects the entire artistic world.

“I don’t think Jack Yeats — I think what you’re buying with a major Picasso or a Matisse is a statement of a change in the history of art that affects the entire artistic world.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

05 / belief

The older I get the more I admire what Quakers stood for, what they did, what Quaker values are; and the more I am conscious that those values infused the — I think — very impressive education that I was lucky enough to be exposed to.

“The older I get the more I admire what Quakers stood for, what they did, what Quaker values are; and the more I am conscious that those values infused the — I think — very impressive education that I was lucky enough to be exposed to.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

06 / belief

I think, yes, if you take a Quaker view of Irish history, you will have a more intrinsically sympathetic view to the varieties of religious experience that exist in Ireland than you would if you were either coming from a hard-line Church of Ireland background or a devoutly Catholic background.

“I think, yes, if you take a Quaker view of Irish history, you will have a more intrinsically sympathetic view to the varieties of religious experience that exist in Ireland than you would if you were either coming from a hard-line Church of Ireland background or a devoutly Catholic background.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

08 / belief

The interesting thing is that Lane and many Irish people had an eye for the new French painting, as did some Scottish collectors, long before they became valuable in the eyes of the English art establishment, so I think there’s always been a case for arguing that Irish art looks to Europe in many ways; many Irish artists train in Europe.

“The interesting thing is that Lane and many Irish people had an eye for the new French painting, as did some Scottish collectors, long before they became valuable in the eyes of the English art establishment, so I think there’s always been a case for arguing that Irish art looks to Europe in many ways; many Irish artists train in Europe.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

10 / belief

I suspect that Douglass, who was a subtle and clever politician, learned that the parallels between what seemed to be the oppression of the native Irish and the very real oppression of Blacks in the United States were not exactly commensurate to each other.

“I suspect that Douglass, who was a subtle and clever politician, learned that the parallels between what seemed to be the oppression of the native Irish and the very real oppression of Blacks in the United States were not exactly commensurate to each other.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

11 / belief

I suspect, and here I’m pushing the boat out a bit, that in about 30 years’ time the governing opinion in the six counties of Northern Ireland might well have shifted much more towards uniting with a European Republic of Ireland to the south than staying with what will by then be a sadly diminished England.

“I suspect, and here I’m pushing the boat out a bit, that in about 30 years’ time the governing opinion in the six counties of Northern Ireland might well have shifted much more towards uniting with a European Republic of Ireland to the south than staying with what will by then be a sadly diminished England.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

13 / belief

I think Belfast would — maybe I speak from the kind of slightly idiosyncratic Protestant culture I was brought up in, but I think that in a united Ireland, Belfast and what it stands for would supply something that was lacking, certainly, in newly independent Ireland: that quality that’s sometimes called Northern Iron.

“I think Belfast would — maybe I speak from the kind of slightly idiosyncratic Protestant culture I was brought up in, but I think that in a united Ireland, Belfast and what it stands for would supply something that was lacking, certainly, in newly independent Ireland: that quality that’s sometimes called Northern Iron.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

14 / prediction

I think there’s a question as to whether the outburst of violence that began in 1968/9 — and then continued, as you know, until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 — there’s a question as to whether this was the bursting of a boil, which was always going to happen because of the way the Catholics in the northeastern counties — the statelet set up by the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 — that this was always going to happen.

“I think there’s a question as to whether the outburst of violence that began in 1968/9 — and then continued, as you know, until the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 — there’s a question as to whether this was the bursting of a boil, which was always going to happen because of the way the Catholics in the northeastern counties — the statelet set up by the Anglo-Irish Treaty in 1921 — that this was always going to happen.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

15 / evaluation

Northern Ireland was never going to be anything but a running sore for the British, and many of them secretly and covertly would have really done their utmost to wash their hands of it, as indeed they may almost unintentionally be doing now because of the nonsensical position in which the catastrophe of Brexit has put Northern Ireland in relation to the larger island and in relation to the Republic.

“Northern Ireland was never going to be anything but a running sore for the British, and many of them secretly and covertly would have really done their utmost to wash their hands of it, as indeed they may almost unintentionally be doing now because of the nonsensical position in which the catastrophe of Brexit has put Northern Ireland in relation to the larger island and in relation to the Republic.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

16 / evaluation

Ireland has come through a lot of its economic dislocation since then and is more — I think I’m right to say — more passionately and more committedly European than ever, especially in the light of what Brexit is bringing about in the larger island next door.

“Ireland has come through a lot of its economic dislocation since then and is more — I think I’m right to say — more passionately and more committedly European than ever, especially in the light of what Brexit is bringing about in the larger island next door.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

17 / evaluation

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.

“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.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

18 / evaluation

I think the PR system that Ireland adopted has stood it in good stead, and I think that Ireland at the moment seems a far more mature and effective polity, in political terms, certainly than Boris Johnson’s England. And I say “England” advisedly, because I think both Wales and Scotland are in a rather questionable position vis-à-vis the unity of the UK at this moment.

“I think the PR system that Ireland adopted has stood it in good stead, and I think that Ireland at the moment seems a far more mature and effective polity, in political terms, certainly than Boris Johnson’s England. And I say “England” advisedly, because I think both Wales and Scotland are in a rather questionable position vis-à-vis the unity of the UK at this moment.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

19 / evaluation

As I wrote about this more (and I wrote another book called Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances), I felt that, looking back through the 19th century and into the late 18th century, the time when the Irish language begins to spectacularly decline and English takes over, the novelists of the early 19th century — Lady Morgan (that’s Sydney Owenson), William Carleton, Sheridan Le Fanu, many others — who used to be seen as rather crude and farouche and slightly-rough-around-the-edges writers, now look to us, looking back through Beckett and Flann O’Brien and other experimentalists, as far more subtle, sophisticated, intentionally destabilizing writers of the English language than they used to be accepted for.

“As I wrote about this more (and I wrote another book called Words Alone: Yeats and His Inheritances), I felt that, looking back through the 19th century and into the late 18th century, the time when the Irish language begins to spectacularly decline and English takes over, the novelists of the early 19th century — Lady Morgan (that’s Sydney Owenson), William Carleton, Sheridan Le Fanu, many others — who used to be seen as rather crude and farouche and slightly-rough-around-the-edges writers, now look to us, looking back through Beckett and Flann O’Brien and other experimentalists, as far more subtle, sophisticated, intentionally destabilizing writers of the English language than they used to be accepted for.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

20 / evaluation

I was in France in 1989, and again, the extraordinary level of commemorativeness about the revolution was something you never see in England, perhaps because England is more secure and perhaps blinkered in its own views of itself and its past.

“I was in France in 1989, and again, the extraordinary level of commemorativeness about the revolution was something you never see in England, perhaps because England is more secure and perhaps blinkered in its own views of itself and its past.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

21 / prediction

Douglass’s trip to Ireland is something people are looking at more and more now because there are so many perceived parallels between the position of the native Irish and other oppressed or excluded elements in different cultures, such as the Native Americans and, of course, Black people in the antebellum and indeed postbellum states of America.

“Douglass’s trip to Ireland is something people are looking at more and more now because there are so many perceived parallels between the position of the native Irish and other oppressed or excluded elements in different cultures, such as the Native Americans and, of course, Black people in the antebellum and indeed postbellum states of America.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler

22 / evaluation

From the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, the Irish economy did expand in a way that it had never done under the years of de Valera (and you as an economist will know this), partly because I think the general tendency began to be to look outward and welcome influences coming in from the outside world.

“From the 1950s, ’60s, ’70s, the Irish economy did expand in a way that it had never done under the years of de Valera (and you as an economist will know this), partly because I think the general tendency began to be to look outward and welcome influences coming in from the outside world.”
Speaker
Roy Foster
Publisher
Conversations with Tyler
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