Don’t get angry over the famine – get rich

If you’ve ever heard the Irish ballad The Fields of Athenry – mawkish but tuneful, available on YouTube – you will know that the villain of the piece is one Sir Charles Trevelyan, Bt (1807-86).

There’s this poor Irish victim being transported by prison ship to Botany Bay, because he ‘stole Trevelyan’s corn/So the young might see the morn’. The Irish had been reduced to consuming rotten potatoes.

Trevelyan was the Treasury official blamed for not halting the dreadful Irish famine of the 1840s. He is marked in song and legend.

So I was expecting kind, tenderhearted Laura Trevelyan – who has paid £100,000 in compensation to the descendants of Caribbean slaves because of her family’s link with slavery – to suggest compo to Ireland for the potato famine. And indeed the former BBC journalist – and Sir Charles’s descendant – has now offered financial reparations to Ireland for her ancestor’s actions.

Sir Charles was charged with planning famine relief, but evidently failed to provide it, owing to his view of ‘providentialism’ – governments shouldn’t meddle with the course of natural events. He called the potato famine ‘a punishment from God for an idle, ungrateful and rebellious country; an indolent and un-self-reliant people’.

He hoped that the Great Hunger, in which a million perished, ‘would teach the Irish a lesson’.

Yet the funny thing is that Ireland doesn’t need the dosh now, because the country is rolling in money. This year’s budget surplus announced by the Minister for Finance is nearly £9 billion. Next year, it will be more than £14 billion.

The Economist repeatedly cites Ireland as one of the richest countries in the EU, with the highest GDP growth.

Much of this revenue derives from American investment. Famine victims emigrated to America, where they often made good and gained political power, and some 30 million American voters now call themselves Irish (like Joe Biden).

It sometimes seems that history’s cruelties eventually correct themselves. ‘Don’t get mad – get rich,’ could be an apt motto.

Sir Charles Trevelyan might be surprised to see just what lessons have been learned from the potato calamity.

A pleasant benefit of life in Ireland is that senior citizens travel free of charge anywhere on Irish railways (and buses). When I meet my old school pals for lunch in Dublin, they have come from Cork, Galway, Limerick and Athlone, paying nothing for their railway tickets – and with no restrictions whatsoever.

When I take the train from Deal in Kent to London, I pay £36.25 for a day return, even with a concessionary senior railcard, and under restrictions as to hours of travel. When I recently needed to arrive in London just before 10am, a train ticket cost me £71.50, even with a senior concession for the return journey. If I’d gone a little earlier, the fare would have been over £80.

But the Irish oldies trip merrily around the country, at any time of the day or night, absolutely gratis. This encourages older people to travel more, socialise, often meeting in groups, and have ‘great craic’, as one of my pals put it.

Grannies have been known to transport themselves a hundred miles, just for a babysitting night, enabled by the free travel.

Accompanying spouses can also avail themselves of the benefit – even if they haven’t yet reached the pension age of 66. And the travel pass applies to private buses as well as national networks – the coaches that serve the airports are also free to oldies.

We are often told that older people are more vulnerable to loneliness and isolation – especially since Covid struck. Ergo, surely it’s a jolly good policy to encourage our cohort to get out and about, going everywhere for free. An enlightened use of a budget surplus!

King Charles and Queen Camilla’s Coronation was a splendid national event, such as only Great Britain can orchestrate – and only a monarchy can dignify.

But Republican France still retains its historical pride in its own monarchy, and a nostalgic attachment to the memory of its kings and queens, some of whom were so heedlessly guillotined.

This year marks the 400th anniversary of the foundation of the Palace of Versailles, started in 1623. And this June, Marie-Antoinette’s gorgeous private chambers will be opened to the public, restored and renewed with loving care.

The last Queen of France designed the décor of these apartments herself, starting in 1774. Perhaps her reputation for extravagance was prompted by her covering the walls of the Gold Room in ‘rich silk hangings, embellished with flowers, arabesques and gold medallions’. She is credited with having had exquisite taste, and ‘a passion’ for interior design.

She was, according to the French Minister of Culture, a ‘vivacious young woman with an innate taste for independence’ and she arranged her living quarters with elegance and harmony.

No praise is too high for the nowcherished French queen.