On 8 November 1726, as James Gibbs’ spectacular St Martin-in-the-Fields had first opened its doors, the great Irish satirist and priest Jonathan Swift published his spectacular and absurdist literary hoax Gulliver’s Travels, an excoriating takedown of Greatness and colonial abuse. The great Irish journalist reads the contemporary world through its genius.
Fintan O’Toole has won the Orwell Prize and the European Press Prize for his journalism and is the author of 20 books, including We Don’t Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Ireland Since 1958 and Heroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain.