A laudable emissary, yes; a traitor, no

JACK LANE (Letters, August 20 and September 5) might desist from his continuing efforts to denigrate the memory of the writer Elizabeth Bowen, who is buried in Farahy Church, near Kildorrery in north Cork, of which I am a trustee (my family and hers are related by marriage). He has two grievances in particular against her: one, that she spied against Ireland, betraying Ireland’s interests/secrets to the British in WWII, and, second, on the basis of a fleeting, frustrated remark, that she hated Ireland.

When Mr Lane claims these were “the central focus of her relationship with Ireland”, he is either being disingenuous or displaying his animus against a meritorious representative of the Anglo-Irish tradition, which some two-nations theorists would like to see excommunicated altogether from the Irish nation and put down as English, quite out of kilter with today’s pluralism and multiculturalism.

In 1948, Bowen said, “I regard myself as an Irish novelist. As long as I can remember I’ve been extremely conscious of being Irish; even when I was writing about very un-Irish things … All my life I’ve been going backwards and forwards between Ireland and England … but that has never robbed me of the strong feeling of my nationality.” There is no sign of hating Ireland.

It is generally accepted today that, within the limits of nationality defined by law, and she always qualified as Irish on that count, people should be free to decide their own identity, not to have it posthumously confiscated from them by political ideologues.

Brian Girvin’s book The Emergency: Neutral Ireland 1939-45 contains many debatable conclusions but also useful new information. From this, it emerges that Bowen wanted an acceptable excuse to travel to Ireland at the height of the war, and that the Irish high commissioner in London, John Dulanty, supported her visit (unpaid) to Ireland to provide independent reports on the state of opinion. To give credit to Mr Lane, he and the Aubane Society have done a public service in publishing some of her reports, despite the lurid commentary accompanying them.

Girvin assesses these reports, which were critical of Churchill’s more belligerent approach to Irish neutrality, echoing the views of de Valera, Walshe, and the army chief of staff at that time.

Bowen was sceptical of James Dillon, the one politician who wanted to involve Ireland in the war. Dulanty’s foreknowledge and encouragement of her visit surely requires a reassessment of the theory she was some kind of traitor to her country and therefore not deserving to be considered Irish.

Britain and Ireland were not enemies. De Valera’s policy during WWII was for Ireland to be vis-à-vis Britain a “friendly neutral”.

Bowen will be commemorated in a service at 3.30pm on Sunday at St Colman’s Church in Farahy. She will be honoured beside Bowen’s Court, where her family lived for generations. If it had been left standing when sold in 1959, though circumstances at the time were not conducive to that, it would surely be a tourist attraction. It would also, like Strokestown House, provide a point of reference on the morals of landlords of Cromwellian descent, which Bowen herself wrote about.

Dr Martin Mansergh, TD

Dáil Éireann

Leinster House

Dublin 2