The fall out from this is pretty potentially momentous. I'm going to notice this, part of my job on these shows is to ventriloquize lots of different points of view. Finton: There cannot be a physical border the island of ireland. And so where we ended up with was er. Simply the working out of that logic, right? If the border isn't going to be a physical one on the island of Ireland, then there's only one other place it can be - in Northern Ireland. But i think people, real people in these countries want to get on with their lives. Once the rhetoric is taken out of it, the practice will be fine
‘Devil-Land’ – that was how foreign observers viewed England in the 17th century: a ‘failed state’ torn apart by seditious rebellion, religious extremism and royal collapse. The historian Clare Jackson recounts this stormy and radical era through the eyes of outsiders across the Channel. But she tells Andrew Marr that the country’s turbulence also bred great creativity and curiosity about the wider world.
The Anglo-French journalist Benedicte Paviot is the UK correspondent of France 24. She explores how the French view Britain today. From Brexit to the government’s pursuit of ‘Global Britain’ and the new Australia/UK/US defence pact, contemporary French neighbours often look on with hostility and bemusement.
Fintan O’Toole is an Irish journalist and polemicist who has spent much of his career commenting on Britain from the other side of the water. But in his latest book, We Don’t Know Ourselves, he turns his attention to Ireland since his birth in 1958. It’s another story of great turbulence and rebellion, from underdevelopment, domination by the Church and a sectarian civil war in the North, to struggles for intellectual, civil and sexual freedoms.
Producer: Katy Hickman