NS on Conquering England

The latest New Statesman carries a review of the Conquering England exhibition at the Royal Portrait Gallery.

The subject of Irish emigration to "the mainland" is almost unmanageably huge – dominated, perhaps, by the story of the "navigators" (navvies) who crossed the Irish Sea, generation after generation, to build England’s canals, railroads and motorways. However, R F Foster and Fintan Cullen, the curators of an exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in London, have bitten off a manageable mouthful of it, devoting their show to Irish involvement in the arts and in politics in Victorian London. If there are no navvies in the story they tell, there is a veritable crowd of playwrights, actors, journalists, poets, politicians, campaigners, models, flower-girls, orange-sellers, painters and draughtsmen, all talking at once. Some of them, the obvious ones – Shaw, Wilde, Parnell, Yeats – are very famous. Most of them are nothing like as famous as they deserve.

Thanks to Gareth at the CEP for the spot.