I'm looking for the unlikeliest people with Irish mothers — such as Cecil Parkinson, Iain Duncan Smith, Agatha Christie mother born in Belfast) etc. Anybody help?
Good point, bednobs. You are of course, is strict statistical terms everyone is as likely as anyone else to have an Irish mother. A better way of putting it would have been "people you might not have known had an Irish mother".
Thanks very much for Spike Milligan, Zacs Master. My list is coming along nicely.
Gness — the list is for a job I've been asked to do for a newspaper. As simple as that, I'm afraid.
Ireland has never been part of Great Britain
But the point is more that her mother was English. She just happened to have been born in Belfast. It would enable her to play football for Northern Ireland these days tho she would no doubt be poached by the Republic (!) but I don't think she counts as the unlikely Oirish mum behind the doyenne of English thriller writers
Or maybe the bar is set low for the op's purposes. We don't know
The Duke of Wellington's mother?
Didn't he famously say about being Irish "being born in a stable doesn't make you a horse" so possibly his mother was Irish?
Partition doesn't come into. AC's mother was British English
I think what you mean is that someone born in say Cork in the 19th century was British Irish whereas nowadays they would not be