One of my greatest sadnesses at the prospective break-up of the Union is that it will set English, Welsh and Northern Irish against Scots in a bitter division of the debts and resources of the whole of the U.K.
Alice Oswald. With Hughes and Heaney gone, people are looking around for the best British and Irish poets. Oswald is one of our finest.
As I told Piers Morgan, ‘Catholics have confession, whereas Northern Irish Protestants only have interviews.’
As they say, one thing led to another, and, ultimately, the British and Irish governments asked me to serve as chairman of the peace negotiations, which ironically began six years ago this week.
For me, no one aspect of the Brexit debate displays so markedly the monomania of many Brexiteers as does the Irish question.
But if republicans are to prevail, if the peace process is to be successfully concluded and Irish sovereignty and re-unification secured, then we have to set the agenda – no-one else is going to do that.
I come from a long line of staunch Irish Catholics.
It’s not that I don’t like American pop; I’m a huge admirer of it, but I think my roots came from a very English and Irish base. Is it all sort of totally non-American sounding, do you think?
I’m Irish, I’m from New York, and I definitely have issues.
I’ve had support from all sides, from people who call themselves Irish, from Northern Irish, to the whole of the UK, to people in America, and it would be terrible for me to segregate myself from one of those groups that support me so much.
I have been interested in Irish traditional music for the past few years.
London in the ’70s was a pretty catastrophic dump, I can tell you. We had every kind of industrial trouble; we had severe energy problems; we were under constant terrorist attack from Irish terrorist groups who started a bombing campaign in English cities; politics were fantastically polarized between left and right.
The gun is not out of Irish politics.
The Italian tough guys, dey talk real deep like dis down in dere chests… while the Irish speak way high-ah, up here in their heads.
My maternal grandmother was Cantonese, so I’m a quarter Chinese and half Irish and a quarter Scottish and raised by English parents living in Scotland.
Before the Great Chicago Fire, no one took notice of Patrick and Catherine O’Leary, two Irish immigrants who lived with their five children on the city’s West Side.
In my childhood there was every year at my old home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cregroostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days. On the last evening there was always a dance for the shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for the dance.
I’m proud of my Irish heritage and culture and this show will feature a lot of Irish dancing.
There are so many wonderful, wonderful musicians in the world, I cannot possibly make a distinction between the fact that they might play classical music, or bluegrass, or Irish traditional, or Indian music.
My father lost his leg in 1927 playing soccer. A kick broke his leg; gangrene set in. They sawed it off. So he didn’t get what a lot of Irish immigrants got, which was a job on the Waterfront – he didn’t get that.
I’m actually more German than Scottish. I’m half-Japanese, 25 percent German, 12 percent Scottish, and 12 percent Irish.
There’s a certain kind of guy, a certain kind of humor, that goes with Irish cops and firemen.
Northern Irish people tend to have this sharp, dark sense of humour.
I have three older brothers. I’m Irish. I’m feisty.
I’m Irish, yeah, but I don’t need to get up on a soapbox about it.
Our Family is deeply honoured to see the Irish Government taking this enormous interest in the development of the Kennedy Homestead Visitor attraction.
From the year of his birth in 1914 until the outbreak of war in 1941, my father lived in a mostly white, mostly working-class, mostly Irish Catholic neighborhood in Brooklyn, New York.
Dad’s Jewish and Irish, Mom’s German and Scotch. I couldn’t say I was anything. My last name isn’t even Downey. My dad changed his name when he wanted to get into the Army and was underage. My real name is Robert Elias. I feel like I’m still looking for a home in some way.
I’ve got the Jewish guilt and the Irish shame and it’s a hell of a job distinguishing which is which.
I would love to play a British character one day. My accent wavers between Scottish and Irish very easily, though.
Los Angeles is not going to be a big naive step for me. I know it’s tough out there, but I do think there’s a place for Irish actors in that market.
I think I’ve got an Irish sensibility for language – I like how people talk. I’m not saying I’ve got it, but I’m obsessed with the way they use language, like they use a swear word very poetically.
World War One is an important part of Ireland’s multi-layered history during which tens of thousands Irish people lost their lives.
Everything that we inherit, the rain, the skies, the speech, and anybody who works in the English language in Ireland knows that there’s the dead ghost of Gaelic in the language we use and listen to and that those things will reflect our Irish identity.
I miss Irish milk. Probably not as much as Superquinn sausages.
Being the U.S. champion is a big deal for me. Knowing that my ancestors built this country, it’s kind of like, the Irish were treated badly in this country for a long time, with a lot of tacky Irish stereotypes, so to me, it’s kind of like a bragging right.
Many of the Victorian and Edwardian activists who campaigned for Irish home rule, for instance, also wanted what they called ‘home rule all round’: separate parliaments not simply for Ireland but also for the Scots and the Welsh – and for the English.
I’m interested in why people talk like they do. Like Boston Irish. It’s so laid back. Why is that?
If it was raining soup, the Irish would go out with forks.
Irish people are still very prickly about Catholic Church. Despite all the scandals and cover-ups that have rocked the church, you can only push it so far.
People do think I’m Jewish. But we’re Irish Catholic. My father had a brogue.
The Irish move to a very low corporation tax has generated very significant revenue growth, considerably in excess of Britain’s, where a slower economy has been combined with a number of stealth taxes.
Other people have a nationality. The Irish and the Jews have a psychosis.
The Irish and Russian communities are huge in New York, so this is truly one of the only places where I can fight in front of all of my fans.
I think of myself as being Jewish and Irish, despite the fact that I’m English.
Angel was the first Irish feature film. Neil’s first movie and my first movie.
It was in a stonecutter’s house where I went to have a headstone made for Raftery’s grave that I found a manuscript book of his poems, written out in the clear beautiful Irish characters.
Ireland never lacked the capacity to feed its people. During the entire ‘great famine,’ the island continued to produce massive amounts of beef and grain. The Irish just couldn’t afford to buy any of it due to the enforcement of rack-renting, high taxation, and suppression of manufactures.
I am who I am: an Irish Catholic kid, working class from Long Island. And I made it big.
I think being a woman is like being Irish. Everyone says you’re important and nice, but you take second place all the same.
You think the Welsh are friendly, but the Irish are fabulous.
I’m just a true Irish boy at heart.
I am, of course, directly descended from Brian Boru, the last king of Ireland, a fact certified by my mother and therefore beyond dispute. But as everybody else with a drop of Irish blood in his carcass is also a guaranteed descendant of the old billy goat, I am not overly arrogant because of this royal strain.
My first mentor and inspiration was my Irish Dancing teacher Patricia Mulholland. She created her own form of dance known as Irish ballet and created stage productions of old Irish myths and legends. They were my first experiences on stage. She told my mum I was destined for the stage, and I took that as my cue.
Growing up with Bronx Irish parents during an era of protests against the status quo, I was especially committed to doing the opposite of what I was told to do. Forty-four years later, I am left with only one means of making a living: comedy.
My feet always danced to Irish traditional music, but I was very glad to get out of the North of Ireland in the mid-Seventies when it was really closed and tight and relentlessly unforgiving.
I don’t feel I have to defend myself for being English or for being Irish, because, in a way, I don’t feel either. And, in another way, of course, I’m both.
My pride at wearing the Irish shirt was always 100 per cent genuine. It was a great honour for myself and my family and something I will always cherish.
I’m from a small Irish family of 10, so there always was music in the house. Growing up, my older sisters had things like ‘South Pacific’ and opera on.
I own a lot of my house, because I’m Irish and from people who never owned anything.
Sinn Fein is an Irish Republican party. We stood in the Assembly election to deliver a prosperous economy and jobs, to protect and enhance public services, support those most in need, and to progress Irish Unity.
