In the 19th century one of the main questions in British politics was: Will there be self-government for the whole of Ireland? After ten years of violence in Northern Ireland the 'Irish Question' is still on the agenda.
F. S. L. Lyons, Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, and the biographer of Parnell and Yeats, argues that we must relate political solutions to cultural realities.
(A shortened studio version of the Brian Rankin Memorial Lecture which was given in Queen's University, Belfast, in December 1978)