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Irish Times
2 days ago
- General
- Irish Times
The truth behind the Normans and Ireland: ‘They abolished slavery'
The Government has announced that it intends to participate in an international year in 2027 to celebrate Norman culture and the 1,000th anniversary of the birth of William the Conqueror. Minister for Housing James Browne , himself of Norman heritage, said the year will acknowledge the huge impact that the Normans had on Ireland and other parts of Europe . However, Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó Snodaigh described the plans as 'offensive' given the 'legacy of William's successors invading and subjugating Ireland in the name of his English crown'. So who is right and who is wrong? READ MORE The Irish Times sought the views of four experts: Seán Duffy is professor of medieval Irish history in Trinity College Dublin (TCD). Brendan Smith is professor of medieval history at the University of Bristol. Conor Kostick is a historian and the author of Strongbow: The Norman Invasion of Ireland. Sparky Booker is an assistant professor in medieval Irish history at Dublin City University. Should Ireland participate in such celebrations? Seán Duffy: Yes, of course. Celebrating Norman culture – its scholars, architects and artists, the intellectual curiosity that gave rise to the medieval universities – is not the same as celebrating the Anglo-Norman invasion of Ireland and, contrary to what Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh has implied, nobody is proposing to do that. What is proposed is that the Norman cultural achievement be marked in 2027 in those parts of Europe which experienced it, in the same way that we value the achievement of ancient Greece or Rome, of Charlemagne and his Carolingian empire, or of Renaissance Florence under the Medici. Brendan Smith: It is a bit of a stretch. Ireland-Normandy contacts by the time Ireland was invaded in 1169 were slight. 'Norman culture' is a tricky concept. The culture the Normans invigorated and exported everywhere from Palestine to Pembrokeshire was French. There wasn't much that was specifically 'Norman' about it. A re-enactment of the Battle of Hastings in which, on October 14th, 1066, William the Conqueror's Norman-French forces defeated an English army, beginning the Norman conquest of England. The 'Normans' arrived in Ireland in 1169. Photograph: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire Conor Kostick: No [to celebrating William]. The guide to answering this question is in his name, William the Bastard, as he was known until he crushed his opponents. Should we celebrate Ireland's Norman heritage? Definitely. As with every period of settlement in Ireland – for example, the Vikings – the people who came here eventually made an important contribution to the development of our country, even if they first came to plunder. To what extent were the Anglo-Normans who arrived in Ireland from 1169 Anglo and/or Norman? Seán Duffy: The simple answer is that – almost without exception – whenever any of the so-called Normans who came to Ireland refer to themselves, they call themselves not Norman but English. What they mean by that is more complicated. They are not referring to what we might call ethnic identity, but rather asserting their political allegiance to the crown of England. The problem with painting everyone with the 'Norman' brush is that many of those who began arriving in Ireland in the late 1160s had probably never set foot in Normandy. [ Art in Focus: Daniel Maclise – The Marriage of Strongbow and Aoife Opens in new window ] We don't know for certain because, to our shame, the kind of large-scale research we need to conduct into individual family origins – tracing the background of the Barrys, Costellos, Cusacks, Dillons, Joyces, Keatings, Powers, Purcells, Roches, Tobins and so many others – still hasn't been done. My hope is that one outcome of the Government's commitment to marking the Year of the Normans is that we start to get answers to such questions through detailed scholarly research. Brendan Smith: Some of the early conquerors of Ireland, such as Strongbow, had estates in Normandy as well as in England and Wales, but they were in a minority. All of them, from lord to peasant, regardless of what language they spoke, identified themselves as 'English', by which they meant they were subjects of the king of England and thus entitled to use English common law. The word 'Norman' is almost entirely absent from contemporary accounts of what happened in Ireland between 1169 and 1171. Sparky Booker: The answer to how 'Norman' these 'Anglo-Normans' were ... depends on the moment in time you are asking about as well as what aspect of their culture – language, architecture, law, politics – you focus on. This is one reason that, in my own work as a historian who primarily works on the later period, the 14th and 15th centuries, I use the term 'English of Ireland' rather than 'Anglo-Norman'. Were the Normans who arrived in Ireland civilisers, conquerors or both? Seán Duffy: One would be hard-pressed to demonstrate a single instance of the 'civilising' effects of the invasion because it was not about bringing civilisation, whatever its advocates at the time or since have averred. Brendan Smith: The invaders certainly portrayed themselves as bringing civilisation to a barbarian country. The papacy reinforced this message by praising King Henry II – who had only recently brought about the murder of Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury – for bringing true Christianity to a people who, in religious terms, had lost their way. Conor Kostick : Both. The Normans were warriors who used their advantage in military technique to muscle their way to control of southern Italy, Sicily, Antioch, England, much of Wales, and – the last of their conquests – the east of Ireland. They wanted control of the wealth being created by land and trade and, having got it, were very eager to consolidate by becoming respectable members of the culture they had invaded. They were quick to marry into the local community, to secure religious approval via donations to the church, to appoint talented locals as administrators, to use local architectural styles. Those who lost out when the Normans arrived in any region were the local elites, who were killed and replaced. Those who benefited were everyone else. This was very evident in Ireland where the poorest people in 1169 were slaves. Slavery was rampant in Ireland. The Normans abolished slavery. Not that they were in favour of human rights. The Normans had learned that to farm grain efficiently it was better to use serfs, who kept a share of the crop and therefore had an incentive to improve the yields, than slaves. Sparky Booker: Rather than either or both, I would say that neither civiliser nor conqueror is the best term for the Anglo-Normans. Military activity was indeed a key part of Anglo-Norman activity in Ireland in 1169 and for centuries afterwards, but their conquest of Ireland was never completed in the medieval period and Irish lords maintained control over significant areas of the island. Is it the case that the English get all the blame for the '800 years of oppression' and the Normans get none? Seán Duffy: This is a classic example of our failure as a nation to dig deep into this invented past we have created. It entrenches a kind of nonsense. It was only in the 19th century that we began calling the invaders Normans – for two reasons, I think. One is the extraordinary popularity of Sir Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe (1819) which practically invented the myth of the Normans and made the Normans 'sexy'. The second reason is less benign and had to do with Anglo-Irish relations. In the 1840s, Daniel O'Connell became the first Irish nationalist leader to begin to repeat the refrain of 700 years of English oppression and it has remained a powerful message. In his statement on the Government plans to mark the Year of the Normans, Deputy Aengus Ó Snodaigh, no mathematician, referred to '900 years of occupation'. [ The Irish Times view on Sinn Féin vs the Normans: a cartoonish version of history Opens in new window ] And one way in which unionist historians, from the late 19th century onwards, could subvert this nationalist axiom was to implant the idea that for the first half of this 700 years the newcomers were not English but French-speaking Normans. The reality is that – whatever their direct or indirect links to the actual Normans of Normandy – most of those who settled in Ireland after 1169 came either from England or Anglo-Norman settlements in Wales. Brendan Smith: Not a Norman in sight in Ireland in 1169, so the fashion for calling the invaders 'Normans' really reflects something else. Study of the past in Ireland and elsewhere became more professionalised in the late 19th century, and that's when 'the Normans' really take off in how Irish people thought about what had had happened in 1169. It avoided a whole range of sensitive issues to call the invaders 'Normans' rather than call them what they called themselves: 'English.' If the Irish Government arranged a 'celebration of 850 years of English culture in Ireland' in 2019 it escaped my attention. Conor Costick: The oppression of Ireland by England really begins to accelerate when England becomes economically more powerful from the end of the 16th century. Back in 1169 we are looking more at a game of thrones between medieval kings and lords, rather than one nation trying to subjugate another into its economic growth. So I wouldn't blame the Normans for English imperialism. After all, the Normans conquered England as well. What do you feel about the statement made by Sinn Féin TD Aengus Ó'Snodaigh that King Charles III is in a line of English kings going back to William the Conqueror? Seán Duffy: I am not remotely persuaded by Deputy Ó Snodaigh's argument that we should ignore the Year of the Normans 'with the North still under the descendants of William the Conqueror's crown'. As of now, for good or ill there exists in these islands an entity whose official name is the 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland'. No organ of this State denies that the 'Normans' came to Ireland as conquerors. But as with Ireland's extraordinarily mature and successful commemorations during the Decade of Centenaries, we can use the 2027 millennium to see where Ireland fits into the Norman world. Conor Kostick: In essence, I don't think this is correct. It gives the impression that Strongbow's invasion was the foundation for later imperial conquest, settlement and occupation of Ireland. But it was a different era and the victorious Normans weren't in Ireland to send wealth to the kingdom of England. They had come to stay.
Irish Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
TV guide: Housewife of the Year, Ginny & Georgia and the other best things to watch this week
Pick of the Week Housewife of the Year Monday, RTÉ One, 9.30pm If Donald Trump were president of Ireland, the first thing he would do would be to reinstate this ancient housekeeping pageant, where Irish women competed to be the best at cooking, cleaning, ironing and fixing their husbands a nice cocktail after his hard day at the office. This documentary opens the cupboards on recent Irish history, when the competition was as hotly contested as a Miss Ireland or Rose of Tralee. Housewife of the Year started in 1965, just when young women around the world were starting to break loose from the pinafores and aprons, and was televised on RTÉ from 1982 until it was finally put out to pasture in 1995. As part of the competition, contestants were filmed at home doing the housework and generally keeping the show on the road, so this documentary features insightful footage of Irish mammies in their natural habitat – even David Attenborough would raise an eyebrow at these arcane domestic rituals. It also features interviews with former contestants, who recall an age when contraception didn't exist, many jobs had a marriage bar, and scrimping and saving to pay for household basics was the norm (still is). And of course there are lots of surreal moments from the event itself, broadcast in front of live audience with Gay Byrne presenting. The film by Little Wing won Best Irish Feature Documentary at last year's Galway Film Fleadh, where it made its debut. Highlights My Epic Camel Adventure with Gordon Buchanan Sunday, RTÉ2, 6.30pm My Epic Camel Adventure with Gordon Buchanan. Photograph: Jack Warrender/Hello Halo productions/BBC Lights, camel, action!* In this wildlife special, aired on the BBC in March, adventurer Gordon Buchanan sets off across the Gobi Desert with only his trusty camels to get him across this treacherous terrain. He will travel over searingly hot sand dunes and perilous, rocky plains – not to mention the daunting Bumbat mountain – and he'll have to develop a close, trusting relationship with his camels if he's going to survive the journey. He'll learn all about these remarkable animals, and how they have evolved to survive in a hostile desert environment, and he'll encounter other denizens of the desert along the way, including wolves, saiga antelopes, yaks and the elusive Gobi bear. (*With apologies to 1980s Anglo-Cork band Stump and their classic tune Charlton Heston.) Our Guy in Vietnam Sunday, Channel 4, 9pm Guy Martin: Our Guy in Vietnam It's been 50 years since the Vietnam war ended, and the country is still dealing with the long legacy of that traumatic conflict. But it's also charging forward into a high-tech future and looking to become an industrial hub of Asia. Guy Martin gets on his motorbike and heads down the iconic Ho Chi Minh Trail to explore the history of the Vietnam war and learn how the country is moving on. In the first of this two-part documentary, Martin stops off at a former US combat base housing a Huey helicopter graveyard. Aistear an Amhráin Tuesday, RTÉ One, 7pm Aistear an Amhráin: Grace Gifford Have you ever heard a song on the radio, in a pub, or on a film soundtrack and wondered about the story behind it? Aistear an Amhráin is back with another playlist of tunes, from evergreen standards and classic pop anthems to uplifting ballads, and explores the real-life inspirations for the songs. What was the love story that fuelled The Frank and Walters' 1990s hit After All? Who was the Belfast roadie whose murder prompted Spandau Ballet to write Through the Barricades? The first programme looks at a tragic love story that inspired one of Ireland's most enduring songs, Grace. The subject of the song was Grace Gifford, who married her beau Joseph Mary Plunkett in Kilmainham Gaol just hours before he was executed as one of the architects of the Easter Rising. The song has been covered by more than 100 artists, including Jim McCann and Rod Stewart (there's even a version by boxer Kellie Harrington), and reporter Sinéad Ní Churnáin meets one of the song's writers, Seán O'Meara, to get the full story of how the song came about. READ MORE Hardy Bucks Thursday, BBC Two, 10pm Okay, calm down – this is not a brand new series of the classic 2010s comedy set in the west of Ireland, but it is a chance to revisit Eddie, Buzz, Frenchtoast and The Boo as they get up to all their aul' shenanigans in the fictional village of Castletown in Co Mayo. This is series three, made 10 years ago, and in episode one, Eddie realises he needs a woman's touch to keep him from going off the rails altogether, but who would be brave – or foolish enough – to take on the job? Time to get back with his ex, Noreen, but the candlelit dinner he's planned fails to rekindle the passion – in fact, it's a complete disaster. The British Soap Awards 2025 Thursday, UTV, 8pm It's time to hand out gongs for the best soaps on the telly, and this year the E's have it, as both EastEnders and Emmerdale are leading the list of nominations with 13 each, including for best leading performer, while Coronation Street and Hollyoaks are trailing behind with 11 nominations each. Jane McDonald returns as host for this year's ceremony, which takes place in front of a live audience at Hackney Empire in London on Saturday. 'You all know I love my soaps, so to be in a room giving recognition to all these wonderful actors and their fantastic hard work is simply joyous,' says McDonald. Streaming Stick From Wednesday, June 4th, Apple TV+ Stick: Owen Wilson What do washed-up sports stars do when they've reached the end of the road and are looking for a pathway to redemption? Easy: they just stumble on a young prodigy, preferably from a dysfunctional background and with a few anger issues, and take them under their wing. Pryce Cahill is a former pro golfer – nicknamed Stick – whose career ended 20 years ago, followed soon after by his marriage and his job at a sporting-goods store. With lots of time on his hands and little else in prospect, Pryce encounters Santi, a troubled teenager who happens to be a genius with a golf club. Can Pryce help Santi hit the heights of PGA success that he never reached himself? And does Santi even want success? Owen Wilson stars as Stick in this comedy drama that plays a bit like Hoosiers meets Happy Gilmore. It's from the crowd that brought us Ted Lasso , so nuff said. Ginny & Georgia From Thursday, June 5th, Netflix Ginny & Georgia: Brianne Howey and Antonia Gentry Mother-daughter relationships can be a bit of a trial, but in the third series of this family drama the family faces an actual trial – for murder. Series two ended with Georgia (Brianne Howey), the mom, being arrested on her own wedding day; her daughter, Ginny (Antonia Gentry), faces the dilemma of whether to believe in her mother's innocence or accept the overwhelming evidence against her. What she does know is that she doesn't want her mom to go to prison. Georgia is put under house arrest and made to wear an electronic ankle monitor, while Ginny has to run the gauntlet in the school corridor every day, with the eyes of her classmates burning through her head. Will the Miller family rise to their greatest challenge yet while still delivering some laugh-out-loud moments? You better believe it, peaches.
BreakingNews.ie
27-05-2025
- General
- BreakingNews.ie
Quiz: Could you pass Leaving Cert Irish history?
The Leaving Certificate curriculum for history covers a lot, from the eclipse of Old Europe (1600s) to the Civil Rights Movement in the US in the 1950s. However, a large amount of knowledge of Irish history, from both the Early Modern period (1490s-1810s) and Later Modern period (1810s-1990s), is required to do well in the subject. Advertisement So how much do you know about Irish history? Would it be enough to pass the Irish history section of a Leaving Cert exam? Take our quiz and find out!
Irish Times
24-05-2025
- Irish Times
‘It belongs with the books of Kells and Durrow.' Illuminated manuscripts back in Ireland for the first time in more than 1,000 years
Nestled among Alpine foothills and south of the glittering Lake Constance lies the historic city of St Gallen, in Switzerland . Natural beauty aside, the city is home to the Abbey of St Gall, a Unesco world heritage site and unexpected repository of Irish history and culture. Now famed for its impressive library, the abbey was founded in the eighth century on the site of a hermitage established in 612 by one of Ireland's lesser-known saints, an Irish monk called Gall or Gallus. Although the monastery was dissolved in 1805, its library was spared and remains brimming with ancient manuscripts today. Honouring the two countries' shared history, the Swiss library has furnished the National Museum of Ireland (NMI) with 17 of its illustrious manuscripts for an exhibition celebrating the story of Gall's journey to continental Europe. This is the library's largest loan ever; for such an institution to bestow more than a couple of manuscripts at a time is practically unheard of. Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe is free to visit in the museum's Kildare Street location from May 30th until October 24th. READ MORE 'If you stood out on O'Connell Street now and asked who was Gallus, I doubt you'd get an answer now,' says Dáibhí Ó Cróinín, a recently retired professor at the University of Galway who was instrumental in the exhibition's conception. [ From the archive: Wandering Irish 'outsider' stumbled upon site for Swiss city of St Gallen Opens in new window ] 'But if you asked anybody in Switzerland or Italy or France or Germany, they'd keep you there for hours. They're very happy about their associations with the Irish.' Ó Cróinín recalls the moment he suggested to library director Dr Cornel Dora that the Abbey of St Gall might temporarily spare some of its collection. The loan that followed allows select manuscripts to return to Irish soil for the first time in a millennium. The pair attended a conference together in the British Library in December 2018, shortly after collaborating on an exhibition at St Gallen. The Swiss city of Saint Gallen, with the Abbey of St Gall visible in the centre of the picture. Photograph: iStock 'We were having a cup of coffee during one of the breaks and I said to Cornel, 'Look, the Brits do this thing well. Why don't we do this kind of thing? Would you be interested in letting us have some of your manuscripts?'' Almost six and a half years later, that idea is coming to life. Accompanying the 17 manuscripts, which range from poems and letters to religious texts, are more than 100 objects gathered from NMI's collection. St Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region — Dr Cornel Dora The Faddan More psalter, found on a Tipperary bog in 2006, is one highlight. Many recent discoveries are on display for the first time, such as the Lough Kinale Book Shrine and a Viking sword, straight from conservation. 'It is a bit like a dream of mine to do something like this because we have this Irish heritage that is important to us in St Gallen,' says Dora, on a phone call from his home in Switzerland. Gall was one of 12 companions to another Irish saint and missionary, Columbanus, responsible for several monastic foundations including those at Luxeuil in eastern France, and Bobbio, in northern Italy. Image from an Irish Evangeliary from the library of the Abbey of St Gall, part of the exhibition Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe 'The Irish brought a new fervour into the Christian life here on the Continent,' says Dora of the monks' European mission. Following a dispute between Gall and Columbanus, they parted ways. 'Gall stayed at Lake Constance and took to the wilderness, the forest. He settled and made a cabin, and about three years later he assembled other monks around him and founded an Irish type of monastery there.' It was on the site of this hermitage, where Gall is buried, that the Abbey of St Gall was founded. 'St Gallen was always conscious of the fact it had an Irish connection. Gall was a very popular saint in the region. Pilgrims came and visited his grave,' says Dora. It is a tradition that continues today. 'We have testimonials that there were Irish men here repeatedly. They really wanted to visit their compatriot Gall. It seems the Irish knew there was an Irish saint in St Gallen. We know about four or five Irish monks who stayed here. One was an recluse, who lived in a confinement that had no door.' The manuscripts on loan to NMI comprise a mixture of books thought to be written in Irish monastic settlements, later travelling to Europe with Gall and Columbanus, and texts penned by Irish scribes in St Gallen. Maeve Sikora, keeper of Irish antiquities at the museum, is joined by assistant keeper and exhibition curator Matthew Seaver, as the pair give me a preview of the exhibition space and a sneak peek at its 'aesthetic highlight' – a mid-eighth century Gospel from St Gallen, thought to originate from the Irish midlands. 'It's really in a class of its own. It belongs with [the books of] Kells and Durrow,' says Seaver, as we inspect the text's vibrantly coloured vellum. On one page a barefoot St Matthew – in hues of orange, red and blue – applies a scribal knife or scraper to a page and dips his pen in an inkwell. He is assisted by a dutiful angel. For Sikora, the exhibition is about portraying 'the connectedness' between Ireland and continental Europe. 'People coming and people going. Ideas coming and going. Artefacts coming and going.' The modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters [from St Columbanus to the pope] — Dr Cornel Dora Manuscripts are complemented by related artefacts, 'so you can see an object that looks just like an illustration in one of the manuscripts,' says Seaver. 'Sometimes a shard of pottery is hard to understand on its own,' says Sikora of the curatorial decision to combine ceramics and works of metal and stone with the manuscripts. Pointing to where some of the objects are soon to be displayed, Seaver describes how their journeys were intertwined with those of Irish missionaries like Columbanus and Gall. 'The ships that are carrying Columbanus and Gall are carrying these pots. They're coming from the eastern Mediterranean, then they're coming from the south of France and toing and froing between Ireland and there in the sixth and seventh centuries. The physical journey is the same as the manuscripts and the people went on, so that's what we're trying to get across.' A Latin grammar book, whose margins are brimming with commentary written in Irish by frustrated monks 'remarking on the writing conditions, how bad the ink is, giving out about making mistakes and begging forgiveness' is on display. [ 'You are only the sixth person to see this since the Vikings': Behind the scenes at the National Museum of Ireland Opens in new window ] 'They write in ogham at one point, saying they are ale-killed, which is essentially hungover,' says Seaver, laughing. The book in question is a copy of the Institutiones Grammaticae of Priscian, well known to Irish scholars in the early Middle Ages. Copies of letters from St Columbanus to the pope make for a timely inclusion in the exhibition. According to Dora, 'the modern European idea shines up for the first time in these letters'. Fragments of the earliest surviving copy of Isidore's etymologiae, written by an Irish scribe in the seventh century and later brought to St Gallen, also make an appearance. The etymological encyclopedia was originally compiled by the influential bishop Isidore of Seville. Another key aspect of the exhibition is a collaborative student manuscript project, which will be on display alongside a short film documenting it. The abbey school in Switzerland was paired up with Irish schools in Ballymote, Co Sligo, Kells in Meath, and Gallen Community School in Offaly. Led by historian and calligrapher Timothy O'Neill, the classes met online where they learned about early medieval culture and how to write in insular script. The students then had the opportunity to express their own ideas on vellum, emulating the scribes of medieval Ireland and St Gallen. NMI's exhibition also traces the journey of one of the abbey's schoolmasters and most famous pilgrims – Moengal, later named Marcellus. Moengal travelled Europe with his uncle Marcus, a bishop. 'They went to Rome and on their return from Rome they went back to St Gallen and decided to stay,' says Seaver. Moengal 'taught a curriculum covering the seven liberal arts to some of the great master craftspeople from St Gallen', leaving a lasting legacy. Words on the Wave: Ireland and St Gallen in Early Medieval Europe is at the National Museum, Kildare Street, Dublin, from May 30th until October 24th.
The Guardian
21-05-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
European ‘year of the Normans' reopens debate over Irish identity
Nine centuries after the Normans clanked ashore with swords and armour, Ireland is still wrestling with the question: what did they ever do for us? A decision by the government this week to join a European cultural initiative called 2027 European year of the Normans has reopened a debate that goes to the core of Irish identity. On the one hand, say historians, they built castles and cathedrals and enriched culture and literature; on the other, they dispossessed the native Gaels and paved the way to invasion and occupation. Sinn Féin, the main opposition party, said the commemoration was offensive because it would honour William the Conqueror, England's first Norman king, and the subjugation inflicted by his successors. 'What will they think of next: a festival of Cromwell? A Famine Queen jubilee?' said the party's culture spokesperson, Aengus Ó Snodaigh, referencing Oliver Cromwell's bloody 17th-century conquests and Queen Victoria's reign during the 1840s famine. 'We Irish know well enough the legacy of William's successors invading and subjugating Ireland in the name of his English crown, with Strongbow ushering in the 900 years of occupation, with the north still under the descendants of William the Conqueror's crown.' Strongbow was the nickname of Richard de Clare, the second Earl of Pembroke, who landed with an Anglo-Norman military force in 1170 and unleashed historical forces that in the 20th century partitioned the island and left Northern Ireland in the UK. However, the Normans also intermarried with Gaels, bequeathed family names such as Burke, Griffith, FitzGerald, Lynch and Walsh, and became, in a celebrated phrase, 'more Irish than the Irish themselves'. The heritage minister, James Browne, who on Tuesday obtained cabinet approval for participation in the trans-European initiative, said Sinn Féin was missing the point. Ireland's lands, laws, monuments and built environment bore Norman heritage, and participation in the initiative would recognise that history while boosting tourism, he said. 'The year of the Normans is being led by our neighbours in Normandy, France, and it is an important and essential collaboration and commemoration – any distortion of this work is really disappointing and careless,' said Browne – a Norman name. 'So let's ask: is Sinn Féin's position that they will boycott all events related to the year of the Normans?' In addition to Ireland, the Normandy regional council has invited Britain, southern Italy, Norway and other countries and regions with Norman heritage to take part in the commemoration, which coincides with the millennium anniversary of William the Conqueror's birth. Ó Snodaigh said: 'Marking the birth of a future English king is not for us, even if it was 1,000 years ago. Rather, we should always be remembering those great figures of Ireland's past who actually lived here and contributed positively to our island story.' The row has prompted comparisons to the scene in Monty Python's Life of Brian when Judeans debate the benefits of Roman occupation. Jane Ohlmeyer, a Trinity College Dublin historian who specialises in early modern Irish and British history, said the Norman invasion profoundly shaped the history of Ireland, especially in the south-east. 'Like it or not, the past is no longer in the past, it is in the present. It is critical that we use opportunities like this one to better understand the nature of the conquest and to reflect on its legacies,' she said.
