Shortlisted for An Post Book Award 2025 BEST IRISH-PUBLISHED BOOK OF THE YEAR. See shortlist
The prospect of Irish unification is now stronger than at any point since partition in 1921. Voters on both sides of the Irish border may soon have to confront for themselves what the answer to a referendum question would mean - for themselves, for their neighbours, and for their society.
Journalists Fintan O'Toole and Sam McBride examine the strongest arguments for and against a united Ireland. What do the words 'united Ireland' even mean? Would it be better for Northern Ireland? Would it improve lives in the Republic of Ireland? And could it be brought about without bloodshed?
O’Toole and McBride each argue the case for and against unity, questioning received wisdom and bringing fresh thinking to one of Ireland’s most intractable questions.
'O’Toole and McBride set out to demonstrate a core principle of liberal democracy: that free and reasoned deliberation can help ensure good quality, consensual outcomes … With intelligence and rigour, they have each made historically significant interventions as journalists and authors.' — Prof Katy Hayward, The Irish Times
'A major and unique contribution … The book illuminates the mindsets of the nationalist and unionist traditions more effectively than many passionate representatives of those traditions have ever achieved … Remarkably and fittingly, unionists and nationalists, northerners and southerners, will find themselves united in recommending this book.' — Prof David Mitchell, Slugger O’Toole
'I'd say to anybody: Definitely buy this book... unionists need to read this book.' — Tim Cairns, ex-DUP adviser
'Well-informed and readable ... essential reading.' — Colin Harvey, Ireland's Future
'They’ve produced a book which is really really interesting.' — Matt Cooper, The Last Word Podcast
'Very interesting, rational arguments on both sides.' — Hugh Linehan, The Irish Times: Election Daily
'Sam McBride and Fintan O’Toole are among some of the best-known journalists on the island of Ireland.' — Ciarán Dunbar, BelTel Podcast
‘Most of the arguments made for and against a united Ireland are advanced publicly by individuals or organisations with skin in the game. We are well used to hearing people attempting to make the facts fit with their own particular preferred outcome. Not so Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride in their new book ‘For and against a united Ireland’, in which they argue for and against constitutional change leaving aside as best as they can any personal baggage they might carry with them on the subject’. — Mark Carruthers, BBC Red Lines
Sam McBride is the Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Independent newspapers. He also writes on Northern Ireland for The Economist. He is a former Political Editor of the Belfast News Letter and has made a BBC film about the Northern Bank robbery. He is author of The Sunday Times bestseller Burned: The Inside Story of the 'Cash-for-Ash' Scandal and Northern Ireland's Secretive New Elite and is a regular broadcaster. Sam lives in Belfast with his wife and two young children.
Fintan O'Toole MRIA is a columnist with The Irish Times and advising editor of the New York Review of Books. His many books on Irish history, politics, society and culture include We Don't Know Ourselves: A Personal History of Modern Ireland. He has been awarded the European Press Prize, the Orwell Prize for Journalism and the Robert Silvers Prize for Journalism.
