The UK government’s handling of Northern Ireland exposed serious failings in UK state negotiating capacity as well as its relative weakness not only to the EU, but also in relation to even one small EU member state, Ireland, which played a far stronger hand far better, even if it ultimately overplayed it. The UK pushback was politically costly to the Johnson government at home and with the EU, but demonstrated at last its ability to win a diplomatic victory. Though it was clear, to those who paid attention, that there were serious implications for Northern Ireland in the event of Brexit, it did not figure much in the question of continued membership or in the campaign. Those implications were much more serious once Theresa May, in her 30 June 2016 leadership speech, stated that ‘Brexit means Brexit’, and this meant ending freedom of movement. That alone determined the kind of future relationship the UK would have with the EU – outside the Single Market – with huge implications for Northern Ireland and Ireland. Yet few recognised then just how much these would come to define Brexit and post-Brexit policy.

Elizabeth Maconchy’s family moved to Dublin in 1917. The five years in which they remained in Ireland coincided with a period of remarkable change in the country: the aftermath of the Easter Rising (1916), the War of Independence (1919–21) and the Irish Civil War (1922–23). Above all, it saw Ireland gain its independence from the ‘United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland’ with the founding of the Irish Free State in 1922. This chapter outlines the trajectory of the revolutionary years in their broad historical and political context. It considers the Irish revolution against the wider background of the Gaelic Revival, with which it was intricately bound, while also considering musical culture in Dublin at that time.

Just as Elizabeth Bowen’s life was shaped by monumental and international conflicts, so war fundamentally shaped her short stories and novels. The First World War haunts Bowen’s debut novel, The Hotel; the Irish War of Independence transforms the very landscape of Ireland in The Last September; and the Second World War draws up numerous conflicts of allegiance and communication in The Heat of the Day and short stories such as ‘Mysterious Kôr’. Throughout these instances, war creates complicated feelings of simultaneity, where the past and future collapse into an inarticulable present, as can be felt in the futile performance of polite society among the Anglo-Irish in The Last September. As much as that suspension of time crushes any sense of futurity, it also opens the opportunity for reimagining the existing orders of the world; hence, war can constrain expression, as with the hedged communication in the short story ‘Careless Talk’, and afford sexual liberation for characters in ‘Mysterious Kôr’ and ‘Summer Night’. For Bowen, the tensions thrown up in war offer not a dialectic but a series of ruptures that can only be experienced, not resolved.

This chapter explores Bowen’s relation to Ireland in literary and cultural criticism over the past half century. It charts how developments and trends in literary criticism – the rise of postcolonial studies and Irish studies, the development of ‘Irish modernism’ as a critical category – have shaped how we understand Bowen as an Irish writer, and her fiction as Irish literature, in the twenty-first century. In particular, it examines whether Bowen’s work readily corresponds to the nationalist and statist concerns that the category of Irish literature often implies. Through a reading of how Bowen figures Ireland and Irishness in A World of Love (1955), I suggest that Bowen’s Irish modernism operates beyond the limits of national and nationalist history, a circumstance that enables a reconsideration of some of the limits and ideologies of the category of Irish literature.

Contrary to the narrative of the Irish Catholic Church’s decline, there exists a range of evidence for a twenty-first-century religious revival. Some of the modern religious deviate from formal practice, engaging with Christianity away from the major churches, while other spiritual practices accord with twenty-first-century Ireland’s cultural diversity. Irish literature has challenged literature but, at times, idealised it. As the religious landscape of Ireland changes, Irish culture finds new ways to explore faith.

Co-written with Hala Jaber, John Nutekpor, and Ewa Żak-Dyndał, this chapter explores the concept of folk music within the framework of migration and discourses of belonging. It takes as its point of departure the experiences of the author, a child of Irish migrants to America, now working in the Irish World Academy of Music and Dance, and three of her doctoral students from Palestine, Ghana, and Poland. The paradoxes often inherent in the concept of folk music are further complicated by the experience of migration in the twenty-first century. An exploration of recent scholarship on music and diaspora, migration, and social inclusion demonstrates the power of ‘folk music’ as a fluid, imagined concept within which identity and belonging can be negotiated. The chapter includes three case studies related to performance research with new migrant communities in Ireland. It concludes that migration fosters the need to create new imaginaries of belonging and that music is a primary strategic resource in this endeavour.

This chapter considers Arthuriana in two distinct linguistic zones: the Celtic languages (excluding Welsh) and Older Scots.  The Arthur of the ‘Gaelic world’ is a figure associated with marvellous, and sometimes comic, adventures – the overtly political themes that persist in Welsh and English writing are usually absent. In the Cornish and Breton regions, Arthur appears in politically complex hagiographical and prophetic material. Older Scots also offers complex and consistent engagement with politics, though from a different vantage point. Here, the dual themes of sovereignty and advice to princes are closely related both to one another and to the long and complex history of contemporary Anglo-Scots political and literary relations. At issue too are crucial questions of geography and national identity.

Ireland showcases the full spectrum of policy triage outcomes, driven by varied institutional setups and organizational cultures. Independent regulators at the central level—the Environmental Protection Agency and the Pensions Authority — manage their tasks with minimal triage. Their status as independent agencies limits blame-shifting, while formal accountability frameworks and political clout help secure resources. Moreover, both agencies foster strong organizational cultures that emphasize collaboration and flexibility, enhancing their ability to absorb additional workloads without undermining core functions. By contrast, the Department of Social Protection exhibits moderate triage frequencies, mostly occurring during sudden workload spikes or seasonal surges. Although the organization’s integrated policy formulation and implementation model shields it from excessive blame-shifting, centralized budgetary controls can hinder its resource mobilization efforts. The National Parks and Wildlife Service, however, grapples with severe, routine triage, largely due to chronic underfunding, weak structural ties to its parent department, and a fragmented internal culture in combination with an increasing implementation load. Finally, Irish City and County Councils also face frequent triage, contending with uncapped policy accumulation yet limited authority to negotiate additional support.

Matthew Paris’ representation of and reporting on Ireland, Scotland and Wales.