Monty Python is a comedy classic. The farcical clash of the conventional and the absurd is timeless. Most memorably, the ‘Dead Parrot’ sketch where pet-shop assistant Michael Palin faces irate customer John Cleese never ages. After almost half a century and counting, the increasingly pained attempts of Palin to deny the dead parrot confronted by the increasingly incredulous Cleese is still hilarious. At least since the plantation of Ulster, two conflicting fictions have caused recurring conflict in Ireland. For Unionists, the fiction that Belfast is as British as Finchley, and for Republicans, that it’s as Irish as Dublin. The binary…

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