ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the connection between history, commemoration and identity. It does this by way of the intriguing, playful but suggestive phrase ‘fantasy echo’. The phrase establishes the investigative framework for consideration of one recent event in Northern Ireland’s history, the marking of the bicentenary of the Irish Act of Union. The study of this commemoration, in turn, provides a useful measure for influential academic reflections about public memory and the organization of public history. Furthermore, it permits critical reflection on the hopes for a ‘new beginning’ in relationships within Northern Ireland which some invested in the Belfast Agreement of 1998. The political investment by the Ulster Unionist leadership in the bicentenary of the Act of Union and the response by others to it is an interesting vignette of public life in Northern Ireland.
