“What goes on on the shrapnel-pocked crust of H.M. Mother Earth”: Brian O’ Nolan and the Second World War

This article examines the significance of the Second World War to the writings of Brian O’Nolan via the multidisciplinary and multilingual research of the entire corpus of O'Nolan's Cruiskeen Lawn articles written between July 1940 and October 194, and with reference to O’Nolan’s other wartime writings and the historical context of Emergency Ireland. It provides context for understanding the war's influence on O’Nolan’s writings by exploring its impact on his social, political and cultural milieu, particularly that of the Irish Times and to Irish cultural nationalists). It also investigates the war's potential to polarise Irish society, the presence of pro-Axis and fascistic currents within the Irish-language movement and the importance of German and European romantic nationalism to Irish cultural nationalism and to Celtic Studies more broadly. While previous critics have argued that O’Nolan took a moral stance against fascism during the war, this article challenges such assumptions by showing that he was a far more ambivalent and evasive observer than has been hitherto acknowledged. Remaining within the bounds of the Irish Free State's censorship parameters in his judgements of foreign belligerents as well as in line with the Free State’s neutrality, he did however advance more pointed criticism of advanced nationalism in Ireland, such as that of the activities of Ailtirí na hAisérighe. By positioning O’Nolan’s criticism and subversion of nationalist rhetoric, both in the Cruiskeen Lawn and in his other wartime writings, in the broader European wartime context and as part of the universalist reaction to the ethno-nationalism and cultural essentialism that characterised the period across Europe and in Ireland, a more nuanced understanding of O'Nolan's multilingual identity and impact is achieved.