A young man by the name of Jack Buckley fought the British as an Irish Republican Army volunteer during Ireland’s war of independence. At one point an aide-de-camp to Republican leader Eamon de Valera in the rebel stronghold of County Cork, Buckley was later decorated for his military service. Fast-forward a century to 2020, and Richard Moore was appointed chief of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, popularly known as MI6. Moore was Buckley’s grandson. No one in Whitehall’s corridors of power gave a thought to his Irish ancestry. 

Moore’s climb to the pinnacle of British cloak-and-daggery is a measure of the curious intimacy that sits alongside the ancient enmities that have often described Anglo-Irish relations. The intermingling between peoples has defied the clashes between governments. At the height of the revolutionary war, the then secretary of state for war Winston Churchill lamented the British failure to hang more of Buckley’s fellow volunteers. Later, he would describe Michael Collins, the ruthless architect of the IRA campaign, as one of Ireland’s true patriots. 

Even at moments of extreme stress between London and Dublin in the years since Ireland was partitioned, Irish emigrants have settled in Britain. De Valera’s insistence on remaining neutral during the second world war enraged Churchill, by then Britain’s prime minister. It did not stop tens of thousands of young men making the short journey across the Irish Sea to enlist in the fight against Hitler’s Germany or to work in Britain’s munitions factories.