Anglo-Irish Murders by Ruth Dudley Edwards

realised your brief was to be so enthusiastically partisan. I hope your fellow countryman says something sensible.’ Amiss put his head in his hands.
    Paddy Reilly was large, scornful and equally voluble, the scorn being mainly directed at Irish historians who sought to perpetuate what he described as that ‘ignorant, snivelling and self-pitying MOPE version of Irish history that collapses under any decent intellectual scrutiny.’ All countries were colonized by stronger neighbours. The truth was that as colonial occupiers went, the British had been benign.
    ‘Brit-lover,’ cried Kelly-Mae.
    Reilly ignored her and moved on to Northern Ireland, which he saw as a place blighted by Catholics being bad losers who demanded separate schooling and tried to wreck the state. There had been discrimination, but nothing as bad as Protestants had suffered in the south, where through murder, intimidation and cultural and religious oppression they had been almost eradicated.
    ‘Good,’ shouted Kelly-Mae. ‘Piddy they weren’t all run out of the country.’
    As the baroness rose threateningly, Laochraí intervened. ‘That was out of order, Kelly-Mae. We have to be inclusive.’
    The baroness looked at her in amazement. ‘Blimey, I didn’t expect you to talk sense. Now continue, Professor Reilly. And if that woman interrupts again she will be thrown out. Freedom of speech is not an inalienable right when I’m in charge.’
    Reilly pressed on vigorously with an increasingly impassioned denunciation of the Anglophobia, rampant Romanism, hypocrisy, corruption, infantilism and necrophiliac aspects of the Irish state. ‘We’ve reached adolescence,’ he concluded, ‘but the MOPE tendency remains in the kindergarten, playing with dangerous toys.’
    The applause was even more uneven this time. The baroness clapped enthusiastically. She looked down at a piece of paper and read ‘Gorrymeeleemahagat. For those of you who don’t know,’ she announced proudly, ‘that means, “Thank you very much.”’ She turned to the minister. ‘I’ll master the coopla fuckill yet, Packie,’ she added gaily. ‘But you’d better learn to spout Kipling as a quid pro quo . You could start with “While the Celt is talking from Valencia to Kirkwall, The English—ah, the English!—don’t say anything at all.”’
    ‘Hardly applies to you,’ said the minister jovially.
    ‘Exception that proves the rule, Packie.’
    She looked down the table at Reilly. ‘That was most illuminating, Professor Reilly.’ Ignoring the hands that had shot up in the MOPE corner, she added, ‘Now I know we were to have had some questions, but since both speakers talked twice as long as they were asked to, we’ll adjourn immediately to the bar.’
    As the crowd surged out, Amiss asked the minister’s secretary to excuse him for a moment, caught up with the baroness and pulled her aside. ‘Jack, you’ve to stop being partisan.’
    ‘Why should I? I am partisan. I haven’t been a bloody civil servant for a long time now. I feel gloriously, irresponsibly free.’
    ‘But you complained about Barry being partisan.’
    ‘That’s because he was partisan on the wrong side.’
    ‘You’re being very unfair. Barry, MOPE and the Irish have a perfectly legitimate complaint against you.’
    ‘Nonsense, Robert. Absolute balls. I absolutely refuse to treat indecent people as well as the decent.’ She grinned. ‘So there. Now I’m going back to my raven-haired beauty.’
    A great deal of wine had been consumed during dinner, and the bar buzzed with mostly merry chatter. While it was clear that people were tending to stick to their own kind, there was a certain amount of unexpected mingling. Amiss was surprised by the pairings of Kapur and Okinawa, Steeples and Wyn Gruffudd, and O’Farrell and the newly-arrived Pooley, as well as by the sight of Barry and Reilly, who were both drinking large whiskies, in deep and amicable conversation with the minister. Indeed Amiss