Aspects of Ulster

by John Oliver (Greystone, 1994). Price £6.95

In Ullans 2 we published an extract from one of Dr Oliver’s previous books — Girl, Name Forgotten… — which revealed the author’s mastery of the Ulster-Scots tongue in his native north Londonderry, albeit from an historical perspective. This new work is a very different, but equally intriguing volume. It explores a host of different aspects of recent Ulster life as experienced by one of our most senior retired Civil Servants. The ‘blurb’ on the back cover describes one major influence of John Andrew Oliver as being ‘the abiding strength of his Ulster-Scots Presbyterian upbringing’ (complemented by a love of Ireland, an attachment to Britain and a European background of culture and language).

Obviously, to our readers, the chapter entitled “On Some Ulster-Scots and their origins in Scotland” will be of particular interest. However, it would do this book a serious injustice to focus exclusively on that section, so wide is the range of subjects that are addressed. Fascinating cameos of cosmopolitan life in Germany, Rhodesia, and Stormont contrast with the homely, domestic glimpses of life in rural Ulster; rugby stories, political anecdotes, historical insights, … art, literature, social conscience, … and so on. The scope is amazing and results from a thoughtful and sensitive review of an exceptionally full life.

Aspects of Ulster is, in a sense, an autobiography, but it is much more than that. Readers will learn as much about Ulster as they will about the author. If we would like the Ulster-Scots to have a positive stereotype — an image abroad of a people that we can be proud of — then Dr Oliver provides an admirable one. How many senior Civil Servants today would publicly assert his ‘wholehearted conviction, unbalanced, unqualified, unmitigated’ that it is wrong to use religious denomination to classify people, — even when the ‘fair employment’ aim is laudable? Dr Oliver deals with each subject using common-sense (unfettered by political correctness), humour, insight and honesty. Aspects of Ulster is a downright good read, and will broaden the mind of every reader — in the proper sense.

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