"A great failing many Ulster people have is our utter lack of interest in the history and legends attached to almost every strip of land in the North. The fault, perhaps, doesn't lie with the people but with the Government. They have yet to produce a school book giving the reader an outline of Ulster history. A country without history is somewhat like a man without a name; he is born, lives, dies, and is forgotten."
– Thomas Carnduff, from an article entitled "I Think This Stage-Ulsterman Stuff Is About Played Out" in the Belfast Telegraph, 18 November 1942.
From just a few searches in the online British Newspaper Archive I am finding a quite different Carnduff than the standard biographies portray. I have only posted a few here, inspired by his article in The Bell in July 1942 – which it turns out was based on a Belfast Telegraph article from four years earlier on 9 July 1938, which was entitled 'The Literature of Orangeism is No Sham'.
Every editor has either conscious or unconscious bias. With his Blue Plaque on Belfast's famous Linen Hall Library, I think Carnduff has been edited selectively, reduced to a smaller thinker than he was, and a rethink is overdue, by someone capable of doing so. But when you send someone panning for gold, make sure they know what gold looks like.
But his point is key - Northern Ireland was 21 years old, into its second generation, and the Government still had not published a history.
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