Britain and Ireland were best of enemies back then

DR MARTIN MANSERGH TD refers to a private communication from Brian Girvin as proof that Elizabeth Bowen’s secret reports to the British government about Ireland during the war were not spy reports (Letters, September 26).

But a private communication is evidence of nothing.

The suggestion seems to be that Ms Bowen was jointly commissioned by the British and Irish governments to draw up these reports which the British government marked ‘secret’ upon receipt of them, utilised them, paid for them and destroyed them after World War II. And no copies have turned up in Irish archives.

If “Britain and Ireland were not enemies during WWII”, as Mr Mansergh says, then when did they cease to be enemies?

Leaving aside the Six Counties, parts of Ireland were under forcible British occupation until the appeasement of 1938. The following year Ireland made preparations to meet England once again as an enemy. A British invasion was expected daily in 1940, as my father and many others could testify because they trained in the LDF to counter it. They were not expecting the Germans in north Cork.

And in 1945, the British prime minister, Winston Churchill, said it had been within his rights to occupy Ireland if he found it expedient.

Elizabeth Bowen’s espionage reports helped him to decide it was not expedient.

Mr Mansergh obviously thinks that present-day Britain would not be friendly with us if we tell the truth about the past. He may be right.

Mr Mansergh says that Ms Bowen’s “choice of burial place in Farahy speaks for itself”.

Her husband, Alan Cameron, who was certainly not Irish, had died at Bowenscourt and was buried at Farahy in 1952. The estate was lost a few years afterwards, including the house, Bowens Court, which Virginia Woolf described as “a stone box”.

More than 20 years later, Ms Bowen wished to be brought back to be buried with her husband and, if that was not possible, to be buried with her mother in England. Perfectly normal things to wish for, ie, to be buried with one of those she loved no matter where they were buried. A purely personal matter and not a political proclamation.

Mr Mansergh might stick to the facts of her life and leave her rest in peace in her afterlife. Or is nothing sacred in his fixation to renationalise Elizabeth Bowen?

Jack Lane

Aubane

Millstreet

Co Cork