On the Margin

Protestants have had a tradition of keeping their heads down since before Irish independence in 1922 and still have. Most of them have gone into Omertà. They had their own social networks businesses large manufacturing companies like Guinness and Jamieson Whiskey and schools and hospitals. But a few historians have taken the position that Southern Protestant citizenship has been indulged rather than being a matter of right in the Roman Catholic Gaelic state that emerged after 1921. So we can ask why did an estimated 42000 leave to go to Northern Ireland England Australia and Canada between 1920 and 1926?<br /><br />In On the Margin Robin Bury describes his lived experiences and those of his family as marginalized Protestants residing in Roman Catholic-controlled Southern Ireland in the twentieth century and what it was like to be set apart placed on the margin despite being as Irish as their fellow Roman Catholics.<br /><br />The author recounts his early childhood in India in the 1940s when his Anglican<br />clergyman father had a post there. He describes growing up in Ireland including<br />his schooling at Midleton College in Co. Cork St. Columba's College in Dublin<br />and Trinity College Dublin. He married an Irish Catholic woman and gives highlights of his family life. He tells of living as an expatriate in Kenya in the 1960s where he was a teacher and his subsequent career in export sales beginning in London England and then continuing largely in Ireland apart from a brief stint in Toronto. He closes with his move in retirement to his mother's native Canada.<br /><br />A self-admitted post-nationalist Robin examines how a once vibrant and industrious ruling minority ended up being the subject of attacks and intimidation in<br />the years following Ireland's independence and aspires to inform the Irish people<br />at home and those in the diaspora about the harm that monocultural nationalism-which is spreading today in various countries-causes when people dwell<br />on supposed past wrongs.<br /><br />Weaving personal accounts and gathered stories about various generations of the<br />Bury family with a myriad of information and thoughts about the broader religious social and political norms of Ireland post independence On the Margin is an engaging and candid memoir written from a rarely told Protestant perspective.