Rev. Dr. Ian Paisley: a religious and political life fully lived

Any analysis of Ian Paisley in life or in death is tempered by one’s own views of him but also ones own view of post war Northern Ireland events: such is the extent to which the man came to define though actually rarely dominate events. There is circularity to Dr. Paisley’s life: he began as an outsider both religiously and politically. He then became an insider politically destroying the UUP and although not becoming a member of the Presbyterian Church …

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Paisley’s religious legacy

Watching the two hours of the BBC’s documentary on Dr. Paisley brought to mind my blog from six years ago of Paisley and Prospero where at the end of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Prospero turns to the audience and says “Now my charms are all o’erthrown And what strength I have’s mine own.” At times it felt a bit like Mallie was interviewing a slightly more quick witted version of Leonid Brezhnev in his latter years. I had intended doing a …

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Ian Paisley: a word in favour of a fading patriarch

Eamonn Mallie has always preferred the bludgeon to the rapier. In Episode One he confronted Ian Paisley with some the most unsavoury quotes of an agitator’s past.  Did you really mean it, Mr Paisley?  In episode two he faced him with other people’s hesitant mutterings of rejection. How did you feel Mr Paisley?  What did  he expect the old man to say? Repudiate the past in the first case and turn the other cheek in the second? That is not the Old …

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