The Green Jacket and the Grey Space

Identity and story in post-conflict societies

I. Whose Rory Is He Anyway?

Like many across Ireland, I watched with bated breath last month as the final round of the 89th Masters unfolded at Augusta National. Rory McIlroy entered Sunday with a two-shot lead after 54 holes—his first outright lead going into the final round of a major in over a decade. The last 18 holes, however, delivered more riveting twists and turns than a John le Carré spy thriller. One moment, McIlroy was astonishing commentators with miraculous iron shots; the next, he was missing putts that would humble an eight-year-old at mini-golf. Justin Rose birdied six of his last eight holes, setting the stage for a sudden-death playoff, but McIlroy prevailed under pressure, birdieing the first hole to secure his long-awaited Green Jacket. He became only the sixth player, and the first European, to complete golf’s modern career Grand Slam.

In the wake of his historic victory, the question of who could claim him re-emerged with predictable ferocity. The British media hailed him as the “third British golfer” to win the Masters (after Nick Faldo and Danny Willett). The Irish Times insisted he was the “first Irish golfer” to do so. Others settled on the more delicate yet diplomatically fraught “Northern Irish.” The scramble reflected not only a familiar tug-of-war over national identity in post-conflict Ireland, but also McIlroy’s own visible discomfort with being squeezed into one of these pre-packaged categories. Born into a minority Catholic family in the predominantly Protestant town of Holywood, Co. Down, McIlroy had come of age in a landscape still haunted by the divisions of the Troubles. In Northern Ireland, identity has long been less a private matter of personal feeling than a public declaration—a box to be ticked, a side to be chosen.

As McIlroy’s fame grew, so too did the pressure to publicly declare allegiance. Was he Irish or British? Catholic or Protestant? Republican or unionist? Nowhere was this tension more visible than in the run-up to the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio, where golf was returning to the Games for the first time in over a century. Would McIlroy compete for Team GB or Team Ireland? British tabloids clung hopefully to an offhand remark that he had “always felt more British than Irish”; Irish commentators reminded the world that he had played for Ireland as an amateur. Caught in the crossfire, McIlroy tweeted that he was in “an extremely sensitive and difficult position,” with no desire to alienate supporters on either side. Some proposed an unlikely solution: marry his then-girlfriend, Danish tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, and adopt her nationality. McIlroy even joked about competing under the Olympic flag as a neutral athlete, alongside stateless refugees. In the end, he chose to represent Ireland—but later withdrew, citing concerns about the Zika virus, a decision that pleased no one.

McIlroy’s identity struggle underscores a larger truth: political and ideological systems often demand simplistic either/or binary choices, when real human experience more often lives in the grey areas in between. One of the founding convictions behind the Story Incubator Writing Lab is that story—personal, place-rooted, reflective storytelling—offers a powerful antidote to this binary thinking. It gives us space to hold contradiction without demanding resolution. It lets us be whole.

II. Sticklebacks and Checkpoints

I grew up in roughly that same grey space, about 90 minutes’ drive from McIlroy’s hometown, just across the border in the Republic. In our rural town, the Troubles weren’t just on the evening news—they were woven into the rhythm of daily life. British soldiers patrolled the roads a few miles away. Our cars and busses were stopped and searched at army checkpoints. Political graffiti appeared overnight on our walls. Despite the tranquility of the landscape, we were never far from the shadow of conflict. It was even in our music—one of the first songs I recall hearing was “Men Behind the Wire,” about police raids and the practice of interning suspects without trial. Every child of that era knew the chorus: “Armored cars and tanks and guns came to take away our sons / But every man must stand behind the men behind the wire.”

The spring and summer of 1981 were especially raw. Irish republican inmates at the Maze Prison, led by 27-year-old Bobby Sands, had begun a hunger strike to protest the British government’s refusal to recognize them as political prisoners. After 66 days without food, Sands died on May 5th; his funeral, attended by over 100,000 people, became both a moment of national mourning and a defiant political act. His death—and the deaths of nine other hunger strikers that summer—galvanized nationalist communities and marked a turning point for Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, as it entered the electoral mainstream. On both sides of the border, that summer left its mark—etched into memory, carved into politics.

I was ten that summer. Much of the political world passed over my head. I was more preoccupied with cycling down leafy laneways in search of sticklebacks—tiny silver fish that flickered in ditches and ponds and could be captured, temporarily, in a jam jar. One of my favorite fishing spots was a bramble-choked ditch on the boundary of a stately Anglo-Irish “big house,” its wrought-iron fence stretching along a sycamore-shaded lane. There I could immerse myself in a world of ferns and water and mud and silvery delight—and stay away from the dark, furrowed brows of adults as they hunched indoors, muttering over the evening news.

III: The Girl Behind the Wire

One afternoon, as I crouched in the mud, I heard rustling overhead and looked up to see a girl about my age in a yellow frock, standing behind the wrought-iron fence, brandishing a stick like a weapon. “What are you doing down there?” she asked, in a clipped English accent. I explained I was catching fish. She gave a peal of half-amused, half-contemptuous laughter. “In a jam jar?” I asked if she was English. “So what if I am?” she retorted—and then informed me these were her grandfather’s fish in her grandfather’s stream, and that I was trespassing. “How can I be trespassing if I’m on the other side of the fence?” I asked. She had no answer. “So are you just going to keep on fishing?” she said. “Are you going to keep on watching?” I replied. “Yes, of course.”

Within minutes, I had caught three sticklebacks, which darted frantically around inside the jam jar. “Look,” I said, passing it as a peace offering through the bars of the fence. She held it up to the light, looking admiringly through the glass. “They’re just divine,” she announced. “You should come and try,” I told her. “I’m not allowed past the fence,” she said self-importantly, brandishing her stick as if defending her realm from the Fenian hordes beyond.

That was how I met Lily, the first English person I had ever talked to. She was three months older than me, lived in London, and was visiting her grandfather before heading to Vienna with her parents for the opera. I had never been more than an hour from home in my life, regarded opera as insufferable screeching, and had certainly never spoken to anyone who described anything as “divine.” We talked through the fence until a woman’s voice called “Lilll-eeeee!” She turned to run, calling back over her shoulder, “See you tomorrow then.”

Tomorrow? We hadn’t made arrangements for tomorrow—and yet curiosity drew me back to the same spot the following day. I spied her sitting in the shade of a tree with a book and beckoned. “What are you reading?” I asked as she walked over. “Five on Kirrin Island Again,” she said. “It’s by…” “Enid Blyton,” I finished. “I know. I have lots of her books.” I wasn’t lying—my uncle, who managed a bookstore, used to send me stacks of coverless paperbacks that would otherwise have been pulped. My room was filled with boxes upon boxes of them.

For a child in 1980s Ireland, amid the backdrop of political unrest, this treasury of British post-war literature offered an escape hatch into a safer world—one of smugglers and midnight feasts, secret tunnels and fog-drenched mysteries. They encouraged curiosity, nurtured independence, and fostered moral clarity. Moreover, they encouraged sympathy rather than hostility towards the English; I could vividly re-create from books the sense of alienation and displacement that children must have felt during the Blitz, as they were sent from London to live with distant rural relatives. However, I had never talked about books to anyone before Lily. It was a new realization that that the transport I felt in reading could be a shared one.

I cycled back to my house before Lily got called in for dinner so that I could lend her a coverless copy of Blyton’s The Secret Island—and received in return her well-thumbed copy of The Mystery of the Burnt Cottage. We both stayed up late that night reading and excitedly shared our reactions to the books the next day. We talked about BBC children’s TV shows like Grange Hill, Why Don’t You?, and Blue Peter. I told her about Wanderly Wagon, an Irish children’s production that blended puppetry, music, and storytelling. Despite her parents’ penchant for opera, Lily had become a fan of Top of the Pops; she taught me about Ultravox, Toyah, and Adam and the Ants. And so it went on. Two kids, from historically opposed backgrounds, able to bond because of shared experiences in culture and story.

Lily was eventually allowed to walk to my house to have tea and eat my mother’s hot buttery scones and jam—which she described as “simply heavenly.” I was given a tour of her grandfather’s house in its fading Anglo-Irish splendor. My brief friendship with the “wee English girl” became a source of amusement to my parents—but it taught me something profound: that stories we share across divides can matter more than the divisions themselves.

That conviction—that shared stories can bridge even the most entrenched chasms—is what led ultimately to the founding of the Story Incubator. In an era when we are increasingly asked to reduce ourselves to headlines, hashtags, or tribal affiliations, storytelling offers something more generous. It allows us to hold tension, to resist simple answers, and to find one another in the space between. We’ll have more to say in future posts about children’s literature and the importance of stoking kids’ imaginations with healthy narrative immersion.