Sonia Purnell’s

PERSPECTIVES

‘From its agrarian past, Ireland has emerged from the shadow of its one-time colonial masters as one of the enviable winners of the 21st Century’

A Neighbourly Tea

When I was fortunate enough to drink tea in a sunny London garden last month with a recently retired senior Irish diplomat, and a former Foreign Office official who had worked in the Dublin Embassy during The Troubles, it struck me how unlikely such a meeting would have once been. Three topics under discussion that memorable afternoon were particularly striking.

One was obviously that though they would once have been cast as adversaries, the pair were now good friends who talked about the past with candour but also personal warmth.

My British companion had been working in the Irish capital in 1976 for the British Ambassador to Ireland, Christopher Ewart-Biggs, a self-proclaimed pacifist who was murdered by the Provisional IRA after just two weeks in the job. The Irishman in our tea-time trio had family connections to his country’s long and tumultuous struggle for independence.

It was a privilege to hear them talk of what had gone before and the extraordinary progress to peace. Truly, this was just one of many, many remarkable reflections of the success of the Good Friday Agreement and the Anglo-Irish friendships and understandings that have flourished ever since.

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