These Divided Isles: Britain and Ireland, Past and Future

by Philip Stephens

Evoking the tumultuous history of the relationship between Britain and Ireland, These Divided Isles investigates the complexities of culture and colonization to ask what the future holds for both countries.

Ireland is Britain's closest neighbor—the sea crossing from Scotland measures only twelve miles. Ireland was also its first conquered territory in what became Britain's empire. The two nation's stories have been intertwined since Anglo-Norman invaders crossed the Irish Sea during the twelfth century.

These Divided Isles tells the extraordinary history of the past century in this tumultuous relationship, from the Anglo-Irish treaty of 1922 to the present day. This is a tale of deep division between Catholic nationalism and Protestant unionism, of wars and terrorist violence, and of occasional moments of great courage on the part of British and Irish leaders.

Today, the post-Brexit weakening of the UK's constitutional ties has coincided with the march of demography in Northern Ireland as the Protestant unionist majority continues to shrink. Sinn Féin's historic string of electoral victories in Northern Ireland since 2022 has once more resurfaced the unfinished business of partition. Here, Philip Stephens explores how Ireland might escape its troubled past by deploying history to inform the future rather than hold it in place.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Ireland

320 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 2, 2025

Reviews

[Brendan (History Nerds United) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, I get to rant. Fully rant about the English treatment of Ireland. All their sanctimonious, condescending...wait, let's set some ground rules.

1. Not talking about Scotland and Wales. Love you folk.
2. Not even talking about British people. Basically just the government.
3. I'm Catholic, but will not be engaging in any religious warfare.
4. I'm American, not Irish-American. I love my heritage but readily admit I am not Irish. I will not be going to Ireland and regaling a pub with where my grandparents are from (but just know that I CAN!).

Back to our regularly scheduled rant. These Divided Isles by Philip Stephens is a wonderful book that looks at the relationship (situationship?) between Britain and Ireland in the century since the Anglo-Irish treaty and partition. Do you not know much about it? Good news and bad news. Bad news is that it is endlessly complicated with a dizzying array of names and acronyms. So many damn acronyms. The good news is Stephens streamlines a lot of the history to make this readable and understandable.

Stephens accomplishes this by looking at the entire story at the government level. (If you want a more street-level and intimate view, please read Say Nothing by Patrick Radden Keefe, Four Shots in the Night by Henry Hemming, There Will Be Fire by Rory Carroll, or The Next One is For You by Ali Watkins.) By keeping it high-level, Stephens is able to condense the history of these divided isles and explain it to someone completely clueless the why of all of this.

The answer to why goes back centuries. The Great Famine should be enough, but there is a lot more. I grew up knowing most of the other reasons, but Stephens adds a twist to the Irish perspective by adding a third way to look at it. Northern Ireland isn't a huge fan of the way the British do things, either, but for different reasons. Northern Ireland has consistently felt like the mainland Brits are ready to abandon them at every turn. Rather than a protector, Northern Ireland sees the British government like an inattentive parent who just hopes the baby will stop crying if they ignore it long enough.

While my point of view is obviously biased, Stephens is both British and Irish. He aims for a balanced view, but he can only go so far to excuse consistent British government missteps driven by condescension, inattention, and hubris. To use their own vernacular, "they've made a right shambles out of this."

Oh, I really liked this book. Can you tell?

(This book was provided as a review copy by Pegasus Books.)

[Deryck Fay · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book about Anglo Irish relations over the past 120 years or so. It is thoroughly researched and well written, with an elegant turn of phrase. While he explains all the various sides in the bitter and sometimes violent history of these isles, the author is not afraid to express his opinion: unsurprisingly, Boris Johnston does not emerge as a hero.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

“To escape the past you must stop living in it.” This was an excellent analysis of Anglo-Irish relations, past, present, and future. Stephens touches on the history of colonization and the Plantation of Ireland, provides a deeper analysis of the 1916 Easter Rising and subsequent events, the progression through the 20th century leading to the Troubles, and then ends with the modern era, Brexit, and the political future of the island’s people. A measured approach, providing the perspective of unionists, nationalist, the Irish and British.
Readers may need to have a basic understanding of the history of Ireland and the politics of the British Isles.

[Killian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read about the history of partition in Ireland, and where do we go from here

[Chris Reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well-written history of England and Ireland’s relationship. As neutral and informative as it gets. To be expected from the FT’s political editor…

[Mark Cornelius · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a book that charts the political history of Ireland from the struggle for independence to the present day. It also looks a little into the future. It’s mostly an enjoyable and interesting read. The sections that work least well are perhaps the two most important bits of the whole story. The chronology and the narrative of the fight for independence from Britain is confusing, and probably assumes considerable knowledge of those events. So it is less than helpful for a casual reader not steeped in Irish history. I almost stopped reading early into the book. Likewise, and in a curious symmetry, the events around the Good Friday agreement towards the end of the book receive a similar treatment. The book is not very long, so I can’t help thinking that Stephens could have expanded both these sections to tell a more accessible story.

But the rest of the book is great. I had not realised quite how unappealing De Valera’s Ireland would have looked to a Protestant Unionist: Catholicism embodied in the constitution; Gaelic promoted as the main language; and an economy deliberately held back to align with some romantic notion of Irish history. It wasn’t that appealing to many southern Catholics, who left in their droves.

I don’t want to give the impression that Stephens is anti-Irish. Indeed, it is interesting that Stephens inserts himself into the book to tell us about his summer holidays in Kiltimagh with his mother’s family. It’s a not-so-subtle attempt to show that he is of southern Irish descent and so he is not some ignorant biased Englishman with an axe to grind.

The paradox of the Unionist position is also well observed. Always loyal to the Crown and proudly British. Yet they were often at loggerheads with the democratically elected British government, even to the extent of building up an auxiliary police force that the Ulster government was prepared to use against British troops.

If you read nothing else in the book, the section on Brexit is extremely entertaining, if depressing too. Stephens is normally quite dispassionate and measured in his writing. That approach stops when he describes the three successive Tory Prime Ministers involved in Brexit. In his previous book, “Britain Alone”, he reserved most of his ire for David Cameron. This time Boris Johnson receives the largest torrent of criticism, while May and Cameron are described in ways hardly designed to improve their self-confidence!

The book concludes with his thoughts about the future. Clearly a united Ireland is now closer than it has been for many years. There is a Catholic majority in the North, and the South is a more progressive and attractive country for a Northerner to join than it might have been seventy odd years ago. But he advises that politicians tread carefully, ignoring the wishes of a significant minority in the North could just be a repetition of mistakes from the past.

[Christine D · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 stars

[Vanessa · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 stars