ABSTRACT
It was the British Prime Minister David Lloyd George who came closest to summing up imperial frustration with Ireland when he likened discussions with the Irish leader Eamon de Valera to ‘picking up mercury with a fork’. De Valera’s amusingly unhelpful response, that he should ‘use a spoon’, 1 perfectly captures the spirit of mutual, and no doubt wilful, incomprehension that has bedevilled modern Anglo-Irish relations.
