Cromwell's shadow on the New Statesman' N one of those fine summer mornings. little posters appeared around Dublin bearing the question: "Will the Papists Capture Trinity?" Strange, one thought. Has Ian Paisley's Protestant Telegraph launched a sales campaign in Dublin? On closer inspection it turned out to be the New Statesman, and on further investigation one discovered that an article by its Dublin correspondent actually bore this title.
It wasn't only the bigotry of the idea that jarred--it was also the word Papist. There is a lingo, of course. in which I and my forebears and most of my friends are Irish Papists, Fenians, Paddies or teigues, just as others are niggers and wogs and yids. And I believe there are equivalent terms for referring to Englishmen and Protestants. But these appellations are never used in selfrespecting Dublin journalism: they are considered not to be the done thing.