The Reluctant Dean

With this year marking the 350th anniversary of the birth of Jonathan Swift, Prof Pierce Grace looks at the fascinating life and work of the greatest satirist in the English language and founder of St Patrick’s Hospital in 1746 Burn everything English except their coal’ might be the opening gambit for the EU’s Brexit negotiators; in Mr DeValera’s protectionist Irish Free State, the slogan was used for propaganda purposes in the hugely costly (to Ireland) Anglo-Irish Trade War of the 1930s. However, the phrase extends back to the 1720s when Jonathan Swift, Dean of St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin, coined it…