It was Václav Havel who said:

“Words are a mysterious, ambiguous, ambivalent, and perfidious phenomenon. They are capable of being rays of light in a realm of darkness… They are equally capable of being lethal arrows. Worst of all, at times they can be the one and the other. And even both at once!”

The words exchanged between Ireland and England have often been part of a long and sometimes tortured exchange. We cannot pretend that it was always a happy and friendly affair, to do so…