Seán Moncrieff: To the British, the Irish aren’t really foreign

Many years ago in London, I had a bit of debate with an English colleague about my nationality. He claimed I was British. His logic, it emerged, was that it’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland – it says so on the passport. I told him that it’s the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. He disputed this, so we agreed to bring our respective passports into work the next day to settle the matter.

We can forget how much Irishness is woven into British life. . This isn’t unique to our part of the world. Lines on a map are just that. On the ground, those areas are far more culturally porous. Around the borders of Europe, for instance, you’ll see the distinct influence of the neighbouring country: in the food, the architectural style, even the language: one country slowly morphs into another rather than suddenly transforms. In Africa, most borders bear virtually no relation to the ethnic groups within them.

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