IRELAND
Bock the Robber

What’s the most powerful human emotion?

You might say fear, since it’s the primal impulse to survive, but you’d be wrong. You might say anger. Bah. That hardly counts as an emotion at all. Even insects get angry. Romantics will of course say love, while cynics will say greed, but it’s none of the above. The most powerful, overwhelming, all-dominating human emotion is shame. Salman Rushdie set out this concept in his novel of the same name, describing how an entire nation, its people and its beliefs could be defined by shame, and what holds true for a vast population like Pakistan’s is equally valid for a tiny bunch of disordered famine-survivors like the Irish.

You think I joke? You think it’s stretching it a bit to describe us as famine survivors, with our well-fed bellies and our ostentatious double-breasted houses (even if we are…