Re Jennifer Horgan’s article (When British schools ignore Irish history, is it any wonder Brexit is such a mess?, 3 October), I was a pupil in a grammar school in Belfast from 1963 to 1971, as an English Catholic whose father was moved to Northern Ireland by his employer. I experienced a crash course in Irish history, in two alternative versions: one in the book “we” used and an alternative version to use in exams because “the examiner would be a Protestant”.
In spite of a tricky occasion on the playground after we learned about Cromwell’s army burning down a church full of people, I truly value the insights I gained and then built on. History has at least two versions, and truth must be searched for. More lessons followed. My friends were shot at on Bloody Sunday, just as I was returning to England.
Years later, on a train journey, I listened in horror to Conservatives laughing about how they would wargame Brexit and the Northern Ireland border. Not just ignorant, but too callous to care.
Maggie Mason
Bristol
• Jennifer Horgan has this about right, although she overemphasises a sense of Irish victimhood and grievance. My experience as a doctoral student at Cambridge University in the early 1970s (a place that should have known better) was similar to hers. Ireland, and the entangled web of our common histories, didn’t seem to register. I rationalised it not as wilful ignorance but, perhaps charitably, primarily as a function of relative size and significance.
We were looking at each other through two ends of the same telescope. The Irish looked through the correct end, and Britain was large and close. The British observed Ireland through the wrong end, and we were thus small and far away. That has changed – but not significantly, alas.
Ian d’Alton
Naas, County Kildare, Ireland
• Jennifer Horgan’s article clearly demonstrates to me, as a Catholic Brit, how very different secular and Protestant schools’ teachings are to Catholic ones, despite all being in the UK.
At my Catholic school, our English literature classes included Brian Friel’s Dancing at Lughnasa and Oscar Wilde texts, and our history classes focused on the fight for Irish independence, going back centuries. It would be brilliant if these subjects, all options on UK exam syllabuses, were paid attention to at more schools.
On my commute every morning I see posters against sectarianism, a problem that may seem distant in England but is prevalent in Scotland. Surely this would be less of a problem if children were taught Irish-British history, and hopefully therewith mutual respect?
Heather Storgaard
Edinburgh
• I couldn’t agree more with Jennifer Horgan’s concern at the failure of our school curriculum to address Anglo-Irish history. I’m Irish, living in the UK, and have two daughters raised here.
A few years ago, after returning from a visit to Northern Ireland, I was discussing the great challenges that still face that region when I realised that my girls knew really very little about any of its recent history.
It is essential that this situation is altered, or British politicians of the future will have no understanding of the complexities and the pain which underpin this relationship.
Maggie O’Connor
Barkway, Hertfordshire
• Your crossword setter Nutmeg should have read Jennifer Horgan’s article before offering the clue “Ulster Times introduced to man on board craft (8)” a few pages later (Cryptic crossword No 28,878, 3 October). The answer – “knitting” – relies on identifying Northern Ireland as Ulster.
The largest county in Ulster – and the most northerly on the island of Ireland – is Donegal. The Ulster counties of Donegal, Monaghan and Cavan are in the Republic of Ireland, not in Northern Ireland.
Alan Wallace
Leeds
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