Today's Ireland is built on political compromise. The UK could learn from its success

The habit of mind is the one that the president of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, set out here last week when he wrote of the post-sectarian "ethical remembering" in which modern Ireland is reflecting on the centenaries of the state's birth between 1916 and 1922.

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These deaths form a potent reminder that Ireland and Britain were once places of harder-edged identities and allegiances than they are today. Some of these still endure, and should not be denied. Others have evolved into what Higgins called "post-sectarian possibilities for the future".

Nevertheless, modern Britain remains a reluctant pupil. It is too hung up about its own supposed greatness. Higgins is right that until the UK engages more openly with its own imperial past, little is likely to change. Britain urgently needs a more capacious and more pluralist view of its history if it too is to be a nation at ease with itself.

From the diaries ...

Defending Ireland