Sponsored event: Where Britain long imagined itself beset by the Irish Question, Ireland now has an English Question. What does this history say about what's to come?

Columnist and 2017 Orwell Prize winner Fintan O’Toole is set to give a must-see talk on the future of Britain and Ireland, in the second Political Quarterly lecture of the year.

The island of Ireland is absolutely central to the Brexit debate – from the fear of a ‘hard border’ to the DUP’s role shaping the negotiations. It is telling that it was the Irish Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney who revealed this week that the vast majority of the negotiations on a withdrawal treaty have been completed.

Now in a key address at the University of London’s iconic Senate House, Irish Times journalist Fintan O’Toole will look at Brexit through the history of Ireland and the UK’s relationship – and what can be learnt by assessing this past:

The event:

• Monday, 15 October 2018, 18:30 – 20:30
• Senate House, London, WC1E

Launching the event, a spokesperson for Political Quarterly said:

“Brexit, like all revolutions, imagines a Year Zero, a new history that began in June 2016 with the glorious victory of the Leave campaign in the referendum.

“But history cannot be shaken off so easily and, for good and ill, Britain’s past is also an Irish past. And in some ways, this history is repeating itself, except with the roles reversed.

“Where Britain long imagined itself beset by the Irish Question, Ireland know has an English Question. It is as if there is a constant quantum of nationalist angst on these islands so that as it diminishes on one island it rises on the other.”

There will be free wine and snacks after the lecture. A waiting list is running for this event. More tickets are likely to be released before the lecture.

Sign up for tickets here.

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