THERE are, according to the book 365 Reasons to be Proud to be Irish, more than a few good reasons to feel national pride every day of the year.
Scottish author Richard Happer, who describes his book as “a magical tour through some of Ireland’s historic moments”, took an actual tour of the country in order to collate the facts and anecdotes included.
London-based Happer visited museums and pubs and talked to locals while travelling through Belfast, Enniskillen, Derry, Dingle in Co. Kerry and Limerick and says he only regrets that he couldn’t stay longer.
Finally, he visited Cork “where my Granny was from” to learn some personal family history. “She had the most beautiful ankles in all Ireland, apparently,” he jokes.
Some of Happer’s favourite discoveries were that St Valentine’s bones are buried in Whitefriar Street Church in Dublin (“a letter from the Pope says so”) to the Irish inventors of the ejector seat, the submarine, and even more surprisingly, the cracker.
Other world changing inventions credited to the Irish include the Beaufort Scale, the lighthouse and the dollar sign.
Explorer Ernest Shackleton (Image: Getty)In science, the book pays tribute to Robert Boyle from Co. Waterford, known as one of the founders of modern chemistry and perhaps a lesser-known but also highly influential Tipperary man named Brendan Bracken.
Bracken’s achievements include buying the Financial Times and turning it into one of the world’s most recognised and successful newspapers, as well as convincing Winston Churchill to run for Prime Minister.
As Minister for Information in the Second World War, Bracken was boss to none other than writer George Orwell who used Bracken as a source of inspiration when writing 1984.
Listed by month, the entries vary from educational and historical to the downright bizarre and plain amusing.
For example, the reason to be proud to be Irish on November 13 is this: “Many people think that the first-ever use of the F-word on television was by English theatre critic Kenneth Tynan in 1965.
"But the plaudits should really go to the heroically honest Belfast man who painted the railings on Stranmillis Embankment alongside the river Lagan, who in 1959 told Ulster TV’s teatime magazine programme, Roundabout, that his job was ‘f*****g boring’."
Actor Peter O'Toole (Image: Getty)All the usual suspects are included too – the works of world-famous and revered Irish writers like James Joyce and Oscar Wilde are listed along with the achievements of explorer Ernest Shackleton (born in Kilkea) and actor Peter O’Toole who starred in the classic film Lawrence of Arabia.
A few facts might still come as a surprise even to trivia fans. You might think there are a lot of pubs in Ireland nowadays, but according to the book, that’s nothing compared with the 17th century.
It cites a 1610 quote by the author Barnaby Rich who said: “It is as rare a thing to find a house in Dublin without a tavern as it is to find a tavern without a strumpet.”
Insults aside, when the Licensing Act of 1635 was passed there were 1,180 pubs in Dublin for the 4,000 families who inhabited the city.
Happer was also amused to find that New Zealand’s national anthem was written by Thomas Bracken from Monaghan. Bracken wrote the words as a poem in the 1870s, although it was officially adopted as the country’s anthem in 1977.
Happer also confirms that all the facts and stories in the book have been checked and verified, in other words there’s no auld blarney here.
