Forgive me if I’ve mentioned him before, but at moments like this I remember a news editor I worked for as a young reporter at the BBC. When it came to the interests of our audience, he said, there was a key fact to bear in mind: “The two most boring words in the English language are ‘Northern Ireland’.”
It was an attitude with a long history. In 1924, Viscount Cranbourne, the fifth Marquess of Salisbury, mused that the average English voter has “little interest in, and less understanding of, Irish affairs”. This week brought some evidence that, 101 years later, much of his observation still holds true. But a challenge to it has come from an unlikely quarter, via what might be one of the most compelling TV dramas of recent years.
