#NorthernIreland2016 Interview Series - Jonathan Drennan

Jonathan Drennan is the classic Belfast and Northern Ireland émigré. Born in Dundonald and raised in East Belfast, he attended RBAI then and Trinity, College Dublin. From Dublin the call of work took Jonathan to London and latterly Sydney, from where he responded to this interview.

Brian John Spencer: "When did you first learn about the Easter Rising of 1916?" Jonathan Drennan: 

"Comparatively recently, at university in Dublin, where I took it on myself to read up on it myself. I had barely studied it at school which was generally focused on the second world war for GCSE History."

Conor Cruise O'Brien - The church and school helps to encourage, exalt and extend tribal-sectarian self-righteousness

Cartoon of Conor Cruise O'Brien

[UPDATE - John Hume wrote in The Irish Times, May 18 1964, "Bigotry and a fixation about religious divisions are the first thing that strike any visitor to the North."]

Our parents are patrons of prejudice, bequeathers of bigotry. Churches and chapels inculcate hate. 

He was that Irish essayist and polemicist so "sorely deficient in Anglophobia". Conor Cruise O'Brien (who was satirised in the 'Gentle Black and Tans'), drew across the grain on so many issues. He was the arch-"revisionist", a charge he countered here. A controversialist and a man of irrepressible energies, we sorely lack his type today.