Sir, - I should like to challenge Fintan O'Toole's assertion that Ireland "has no equivalent of Tom Nairn" as a "world-class theorist of nationalism" (Weekend, January 15th). Surely Conor Cruise O'Brien for several decades has been "capable of understanding the convulsions of identity on these islands". And a sustained analysis of nationalist Ireland has been carried out by Prof Ricard Kearney, whose excellent series "Post-modern Ireland" and "Ideas of a Republic" initially appeared in your own newspaper.
A close reading of Kearney's Postnationalist Ireland (Routledge 1997) would demonstrate the capability of Irish intellectuals to comprehend "the native, institutionalised middle class with its over-regimented canny culture of doing everything by the rules and never looking further than you have to." - Yours, etc.,
Robert Vance, St David's Terrace, Glasnevin, Dublin 9.