Peace comes dropping slow

From Flanders fields to the Israeli holiday resorts from which European tourists came scurrying home, it was a week to contemplate the horrors of warfare and to clutch tightly to the alternative.

Surely, for some Irish people, the image of our President standing beside Britain's Queen in what was, after all, a traditional military wreath-laying made for uncomfortable viewing. However, the sight of that round tower constructed from the remains of the Mullingar workhouse lent the event unexpected dimensions.

And the President, Mrs McAleese arguably made her best possible pitch for an audience of under-reconstruction nationalists by spending part of Tuesday evening with Eamon Dunphy on The Last Word (Today FM). Dunphy didn't have an awful lot to do: on the rainy day she welcomed Prince Philip to Ireland, the President's words flowed like a river in flood - but somehow managed to sound carefully chosen.

And they were. For the audience in question, her subtle emphasis was on the overlooked way that a narrow unionist historical narrative was challenged by the week's events, but it was couched in appropriate, unpretentious reconciliation-speak. No one all week did a better job of contextualising this revision of history as part of the peace process.

It was a great week for people such as Myles Dungan, O/C of the broadcasting wing of the movement to bring the first World War and its Irish cannon-fodder in from the margins of the Republic's consciousness. In Belgium for Five Seven Live (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday), he was shy about his own role - but his voice and our associations with it gave an extra layer of poignancy and gravitas to the occasion.

Inevitably, in the nature of such memorials, the solemn media coverage verged on glorifying the cause as well as the men who died for it. So it was as well that several programmes reached for the archives and the voices that told us, first-hand, about the first World War's barbarity and the awful treatment of ordinary soldiers by their "superiors".

And fair play to News at One for reminding us about the war's sheer stupidity. British historian Niall Ferguson talked about how Britain's intervention turned the war into a bloodbath, about the disproportionate casualties suffered by Scottish and Irish units and, in general, about the fact that "they did die in vain". It was grimly amusing that virtually the only radio voice enunciating this once-traditionally Irish view of the war had a plummy Cambridge academic's accent.

As for the threat of new carnage in the Middle East, the mellifluous Longford tones of Albert Reynolds captured that situation as only he could on Today with Pat Kenny (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Just back from a visit to Iraq, he was concise about the effect of sanctions and - in spite of his affection for the American president ("I know Bill. Bill's a good man") was keen to explain that the persistent pressure on Iraq was a result of that thing which Albert knows best of all: business.

His concise explanation of the danger to oil prices - and thus to other Arab and multinational interests - if the pressure lifted was the perfect antidote to the likes of Mark Dewar on Morning Ireland (RTE Radio 1, Monday to Friday). Dewar, in full Gulf-War-khaki mode, insisted on discussing the situation as though it were a game of football. To which the best media-crit riposte is It Ain't Necessarily So. Sportin' Life's great song and other highlights from Porgy and Bess - in both bel canto and jazz versions - featured in the final programme of Donald Helme's wonderful series on George Gershwin. Let's hope there's still room for such a series after John Kelly moves into Radio 1's main evening music slot.

One of the occupational hazards of getting paid to have an opinion is that I've been known to rub people up the wrong way - and I'm congenitally unsuited to conflict. (I know, your heart bleeds.) Still, I try to keep my own response to a minimum, the right to reply being one of the handful of high-minded journalistic shibboleths that move me morally.

So my early assessment of the new RTE Radio 1 schedule, published last Friday, stands or falls on its own merits - as will the schedule, utterly regardless of my opinion; I hope it works a treat.

Still, where I can clarify: a paragraph in the piece was interpreted by an angry reader as a slur on the age profile of the station's listeners. As I think I've written before, to my mind there is absolutely nothing wrong - in fact, there's everything right - about aiming to serve older people.

The "danger" of doing so is in the minds of marketing people who reckon such listeners are no longer ripe for picking by advertisers, as well as being prone to "attrition". These arguments don't necessarily stand up, as the continuing good health of Radio 1 perhaps attests, but they remain common currency where media business is transacted.