May 29, 2005 Biography: Carson by Geoffrey Lewis REVIEWED BY RUTH DUDLEY EDWARDS CARSON: The Man Who Divided Ireland by Geoffrey Lewis Hambledon and London £19.99 pp277 There is a timelessness about Northern Ireland. The Rev Ian Paisley, who has just succeeded David Trimble as the leading voice of Ulster unionism, epitomises a centuries-old tradition of roaring clergy who repel the British government as much as the southern Irish. A century ago, Arthur Balfour, the great Conservative statesman and Edward Carson's mentor, could no more abide Ulster Protestants than these days can the majority of new Labour. Peter Hain, the new secretary of state for Ulster, already looks like a chap who wishes he had stayed safely in his Tardis instead of straying into what sounds like the 17th century. Yet there have always been outsiders who saw the merits of these flinty, disciplined, straight-talking people, not least those Americans who recognise what they owe to the work ethic and raw courage of innumerable immigrant Presbyterian Ulster-Scots who fought valiantly on the frontiers and in the war of independence. Among those admirers closer to home were two romantics: Rudyard Kipling (who wrote elegiacally at the time of the home-rule controversy of the betrayal of loyal Ulster) and Carson. It is one of the many paradoxes of Carson's life that he was born and brought up in Dublin of Scottish and southern Anglo-Irish stock, made his career in the south and in London, yet became the greatest of all the heroes in the Ulster Protestant pantheon. An Irish patriot, he was passionately devoted to the Union. And although he hated the very idea of partition, he became indeed (as the book's subtitle emphasises) the driving force behind the division of Ireland. He is venerated by bigots such as Paisley, yet there was nothing sectarian about him. Full article at the link below....... http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,2-534-1626735,00.html -- Faugh A Ballagh Lámh Dhearg Abú *Tha Hamely Tongue:-* Houl yer whist - keep quiet / don`t butt in Ye hallion - you tearaway Skreigh o day - crack of dawn / day Scundered - fed up <http://68.178.144.142/cgi-bin/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=7520&page=1>