The most illuminating books about the turbulent relationship between Ireland and England

Elizabeth Bowen once described the Ireland-England relationship as ‘a mixture of showing-off and suspicion, nearly as bad as sex’. Her 1928 novel demonstrates this beautifully, eviscerating the attitudes of  Anglo-Irish grandees in their Big House as the country around them crackles with guerilla war and showing the incomprehension between the Irish (at all social levels) and the British soldiers sent ostensibly to keep the peace.

Though it ends in tragedy, social comedy, as so often, shows the brutal realities beneath the surface. And the atmosphere of the Irish landscape, at once idyllic and brooding, comes alive in Bowen’s supercharged prose.

I first encountered this book as a series of lectures in Oxford in 1978 and was riveted.

Lyons faced head-on the themes of cultural and sectarian antagonism in Ireland from the death of the constitutionalist nationalist leader Parnell in 1891 to independent Ireland’s decision to remain neutral in World War II, using sources that were as much literary as political, and at the end projecting the divisions in Irish society forward to the then-current violence in the North. The tone was notably acerbic, even verging towards despair, but also employing bitter humour.

A great historian, he died prematurely a few years later when just embarking on his projected but unwritten biography of Yeats. He had written many books, but this is the one that left the loudest echoes–notably in nailing the psychological gulf of understanding between Ireland and Britain that became so apparent in the early twentieth century.

I spent eighteen years writing the authorized biography of W.B. Yeats, and he haunts me still.

Though his poetry is world-famous, his autobiographies are less well known; yet they illuminate like nothing else the experience of living between Ireland and England and the contrast between a childhood in late-Victorian County Sligo and coming of age in the artistic circles of fin-de-siecle London.

At the end of his life, Yeats reflected on the tension between his Irish background and English conditioning and the contradictory feelings they inspired, writing, "My hatred tortures me with love, my love with hate." Elsewhere, he wrote that poetry comes out of "the struggle with ourselves," and his autobiographies show this to mesmerizing effect.

I love this novel so much that I named my son Phineas in homage.

Anthony Trollope might seem the ur-English novelist because of his much-loved series of Barhhester novels set among clerics in a provincial town, but he spent much of his working life in Ireland and wrote passionately about the country in many of his books.

Phineas Finn is a kind of alter ego, a young Irishman equipped with charm, good looks, and very little money. He becomes a Member of Parliament and sets out to find his way through the challenges and dilemmas of high society in Victorian London. His moral compass sometimes goes slightly awry, but it generally comes right in the end.

Trollope’s psychological subtlety draws out the ambiguities and prejudices that Phineas encounters and reminds us of the central part played by Ireland in the British Empire. He died long before Ireland’s separation from Britain, but his work helps explain why the severance was so traumatic when it came.

This is a play that reads like the most hilarious novel, and the "Preface for Politicians" should be required reading for British diplomats and civil servants.

Shaw deals with the misunderstandings that arise when a rich Englishman arrives in Edwardian Ireland to develop a tourist opportunity. His approach is at once idealistic and exploitative, while his Irish colleagues are cynical, hardheaded, and privately contemptuous.

In the accompanying "Preface," Shaw uses the misunderstandings that arise from self-interest and wilful ignorance to illuminate and expose Britain’s misgovernment of Ireland. His perspective is socialist rather than nationalist, but few saw as far ahead as he did in 1904, and his devastating humour still takes your breath away.