Three Thousand Versts of Loneliness

O’Neill has picked up on the SNP’s slant on the results of the British Social Attitudes survey which has detected a decline in the propensity of people to define themselves principally as British. O’Neill quite rightly points out that the nationalists’ interpretation of the results reflects their own narrow conception of identity, rather than any meaningful rejection of a multifaceted, multilayered identity which includes a sense of Britishness. A healthy and vibrant Union does not require its citizens to define themselves “only or mainly” as British. On the contrary, people in the United Kingdom may adopt any number of cultural, ethnic or national allegiances, without dissipating their sense of political allegiance to the Union. It is only when the prescriptive and political nationalist reading of identity is applied that “only or mainly” becomes a relevant category in assessing the strength of Britishness. O’Neill cites my post on Michael Longley’s thoughts on identity and wid

It is a rare and noteworthy event when BBC Northern Ireland produces a regional programme for which it is worth disrupting the national schedules. Often the sole purpose of local programming appears to be displacing Match of the Day or Question Time (I do appreciate that an easy solution is acquiring a digibox). Last night the Corporation broadcast just such a rarity in the form of Fergal Keane’s documentary about Belfast poet Michael Longley. The programme lingered on the relationship of place and poetry in Longley’s work and in particular the manner in which Northern Ireland’s troubles shaped the poet’s output. Although the form of Longley’s poetry owes more to English and classical traditions, its content and themes are grounded in the natural beauty of Ireland and on the troubled history of Northern Ireland. As a correspondent who covered the Troubles in Belfast it was the latter which dominated the interviews which Keane conducted. I was perhaps most interested in Longley’s th