Fintan O’Toole: The Unknown Knowns of Ireland

One of Ireland’s finest journalists shares an intimate account of how the country has changed during his lifetime. There are many contradictions in Ireland’s history and the title of Fintan O’Toole’s personal history, We Don’t Know Ourselves, is one of them.
 
It can be taken to describe what O’Toole sees as ‘Irish people’s strange capacity not to know things’ or to express pleasure in tracking the journey to modernity.