Sir, – Fintan O'Toole's article ("Art is the way to the heart when celebrating a centenary", July 27th) with his emphasis on "serious commitment to artistic engagement with the process of commemoration" (my emphasis) is characteristically thought-provoking. Events such as the 1916 Rising or the 1913 Lockout, are more fully understood across a wider range of human responses if we've ever watched O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars or Plunkett's Strumpet City; this was demonstrably and movingly realised in the new insights into Irish Protestant culture of the first World War facilitated by McGuinnness's 1985 Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (which O'Toole's article mistitles).
However, O'Toole virtually overturns his own argument by misquoting Brian Friel's Translations. In the final moments of that politically indispensable play, the old hedge-schoolmaster, Hugh, his mission rendered redundant by the pressure of events, observes in the resonant lines: "it is not the literal past, the 'facts' of history, that shape us, but images of the past embodied in language": O'Toole renders "literal" as "lived' – and the difference is surely crucial. – Yours, etc,
Dr PATRICK BURKE,
Castle Heath,
Malahide,
Co Dublin.