Southern Irish Protestants: Histories, Lives and Literature

This book is a reflection of - and on - my own personal journey of discovery through the medium of history. I am a 'southern Irish Protestant.' In these three words - somewhere, somehow - lie my own sense of identity. In truth, it tells more of what I'm not than what I am. Most of my fellow-citizens are quite simply 'Irish.' It would never occur to them to describe themselves as 'southern Irish Catholics.' But as Edna Longley remarked in 1989 if Catholics are born Irish, Protestants have to 'work their passage to Irishness.' A fundamental journey towards understanding identity is what this book attempts to illuminate. These essays - illuminating my development as an historian - cover six broad themes. The first looks at Protestant culture and Protestant lives. The second examines questions of historical process and cultural appropriation. The third interrogates southern Protestantism through literary ladies - Elizabeth Bowen, Molly Keane, Iris Murdoch. Through narratives of war, rebellion and conciliation, the fourth theme looks at how conflict and attempts at resolution shaped the southern Protestant identity. That shades into a fifth - the existential changes in the aftermath of the 1921-22 'settlement'. Finally, I interrogate the place of religious disputation in forming the Protestant world-view.