Divide and conquer is a well-known strategy. The more I read the more I realise that the true 'big picture' story of the 1688 Revolution has, over the past century or so, been divided and diminished, its events detached from one another and told as broken pieces which took place solely within the various parts of our islands. The cords have been broken. Even today's 'unionists' don't think in a truly joined-up way, most are content to have stories which are limited to their own 'home nation'. But, leaving aside the politics of competing nationalisms, these stories don't make sense separately, they belong together.
To escape the present you have to read from the past. This 1889 book - The Fall of the Stuarts; and Western Europe 1678-1697 (online here) was written by Rev Edward 'Badger' Hale, the assistant master of Eton College. International in scope, easy to read, a glimpse of how the pieces of the jigsaw once fitted together to create a far bigger story - the end of 'Stuart' tyranny of Charles II and James II, and the confounding of the 'superpower' plan of Louis XIV.
Since this book was published in 1889 there's been a lot of political division, upheaval and change on these islands, never mind the two world wars. Our context is different now.
But in present-day England, the telling of this story is remarkably free of the overtly tribal obsessions in Ireland - of course there's a religious dimension to it, but it's nothing like how it's told on our side of the water. I'm just back from Somerset where I saw afresh how the 1685 Monmouth Rebellion is told there. More to follow.
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