I HAVE a confession to make. I’m a third Irish, according to the DNA test my sister bought me for Christmas, yet it took me 40 years to learn anything about the history of Ireland. As the crow flies, I live closer to Dublin, where my grandmother was born and spent most of her childhood, than I do to London. Yet I’ve never even spent a drunken weekend on a stag do in Temple Bar.

My only introduction to Irish culture was singing rebel songs with my aunts, uncles and cousins at my grandparents’ house on Boxing Day each year. My mother used to tell me about her Irish dancing lessons and my aunt recalls being in a dance troupe called “Sinn Fein.” But over time, as the family grew and mixed with English blood, that sense of Irishness seemed to fade.

I’m not alone. Some estimates suggest over six million people in Britain and the north of Ireland are entitled to an Irish passport — more than the population of the Republic of Ireland itself! Yet I’d wager that one thing many of us share is our ignorance of Irish history.