For centuries, London felt threatened from the west. Fears that imperial Spain, republican France, Nazi Germany, or Soviet Russia would use Ireland as a malign springboard spooked Whitehall.  Of course, Whitehall’s fear wasn’t groundless. Periodically, English conflicts did spark Irish separatists. Seduced by the siren call that “England’s difficulty is Ireland’s opportunity”, successive waves sought to exploit periods of perceived English weakness.  As famously captured by Churchill in 1918, even the dramatic upheavals of a World War and a bloody Rising made little difference to this age-old pattern: “The whole map of Europe has been changed… but as the deluge…

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