Culture | After the Good Friday Agreement

Northern Ireland’s arts have blossomed. But divisions endure

Raucous or heartfelt, portrayals of Northern Irish life tend to stick to one community or the other

T37E5C Mural featuring the main characters from the Channel 4 television series Derry Girls on the wall of the Badger Pub, Derry, Londonderry, Northern Ire — Image: Alamy

Apr 5th 2023|BELFAST

It was a milestone in Northern Ireland’s journey from a shaky ceasefire in 1994 to the more durable political settlement that was reached four years later. In November 1995 Bill Clinton stood near the historic walls of Derry—Londonderry to its Protestants—and uttered a sequence of sonorous lines by Seamus Heaney, a local poet and dramatist who had just won the Nobel prize: “Once in a lifetime/The longed-for tidal wave/Of justice can rise up/And hope and history rhyme.”

This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Alone together”