Your guess is as good as mine SJ. I wasn't outraged, just mystified by his comment.

I see GUEST who said that after Ard's comment has had his comment pulled. So now it looks like I was accusing Ard of being a shit stirrer. As if I would.........

I think its quibbling when you say that England didn't commit genocide. There are sins of ommission, and don't we all turn the other way - think my own life's depressing enough, why should I care about these people. I'm sure we all turn our faces away from suffering every night on the news.

The extraordinary thing about the famine was that it was on our doorstep. I suppose literally in my case - my family would have been Irish at that point. You think of Anthony Trollope riding round Ireland doing some sort of Inspector's job for the post office. And he comes home and makes his name writing comedies of manners set in an English cathedral close. You'd think an experience like that would burn itself onto the soul of a great writer forever. In Trollope perhaps you can see a microsm of the English reaction.

Some writers gain from their historical perspective. Think of Isherwood in Berlin creating Fraulein Sally Bowles, and we can almost taste the decadence and threadbare misery of the era.

I suppose writers are like the rest of us - unique in their reactions.