The series begins in 1868. Sir Benjamin Guinness is dead, and his two eldest sons inherit what is now Ireland’s largest brewing concern. From small beginnings in 1759, when Arthur Guinness took out a 9,000-year lease on a site at St James’s Gate in Dublin (rent: £45 per annum), the eponymous stout had gained ground year on year. A degree of brand recognition must have been achieved by 1815, when a cavalry officer found himself desperate for a jar of the black stuff after sustaining wounds at Waterloo. “When I was sufficiently recovered to be able to take some nourishment,” he wrote, “I felt the most extraordinary desire for a glass of Guinness.” By 1840, more Guinness was sold in England than Ireland, and when Sir Benjamin died, the brewery was on the cusp of global success.

House of Guinness follows Sir Benjamin’s children as they scheme, slurp and swive their way through Victorian Dublin. Some work hard, others hardly work. This is all a good laugh, but the most interesting thing is not what these baby Guinnesses do, but who they are. In the words of one proto-Republican, the Guinness family are “the Protestant gentry that make us Irish suffer at the hands of the British.” Another character refers dismissively to “dice-rolling Protestants.” And these brewers aren’t just Protestant. They’re English, too. The family feels the weight of this identity, knowing that success in business has brought other, unwanted responsibilities. When a homosexual Guinness is blackmailed, he is warned that “The Fenians would use you as proof of a degenerate English Protestant ruling class.”

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Belfast is crumbling

By Alexander Poots

All this might come as a surprise to some international viewers. House of Guinness is, in part, the story of how a quintessentially Protestant product became a quintessentially Irish icon. Dramatic license is used in spades — each episode begins with the legend, “This fiction is inspired by true stories” — but confusion about whether England or Ireland is home surfaces frequently and rings true. Arthur, the eldest Guinness brother, educated at Eton and living in London, is chided for his English accent and rigid Unionism. His younger brother Edward, raised in Dublin, has a more pragmatic view of the Irish question. Taken together, the two young men embody the contradictions of their ethnicity and class. Knight sensibly avoids the term “Anglo-Irish”, but that is what they are, or at least what they had become.

Who were the Anglo-Irish? Mainly the scions of those English colonists granted large estates during the plantations of the early 1600s, and in the wake of Cromwell’s Irish wars. Still, it’s an elastic term, and includes the Gaelic nobility and descendants of Norman invaders who converted to Protestantism to retain land and status, as well as those who had done well enough in business or politics to gain entry to Dublin’s ballrooms.

In Brendan Behan’s 1958 play, The Hostage, an Anglo-Irishman is defined simply: “A Protestant with a horse.” But not just any Protestant. These, after all, are established Church of Ireland types rather than Methodists or Presbyterians. Work is important, too, or rather the lack of it. Their days, Behan wrote, are spent “riding horses, drinking whiskey and reading double-meaning books in Irish at Trinity College.” He evokes a leisured people, and by implication a landed people, whose only true passion has four muscular legs and an alluring whicker. Still, he was a clubbable sort. He’d mock the Anglo-Irish on stage and gladly accept their hospitality off it. At the height of his fame he was a regular guest at Luggala, the Guinness family pile in County Wicklow. Some say he was even asked to write a slogan for the brand. I can’t find any evidence for that claim one way or the other. The only certainty is that Behan’s reputed suggestion — “Guinness gets you drunk” — was never used.

The Guinness who took out a lease at St James’s Gate in 1759 wouldn’t qualify as Anglo-Irish according to Behan’s definition. This wasn’t just about English heritage, after all, but class. The first Arthur Guinness had little money and no status, and you’d need at least one of those to count. But in the era covered by House of Guinness, things were changing. Sir Benjamin was the first member of the family to receive a knighthood. His son, Edward, was created Baron Iveagh in 1891. The baronetcy was named for a certain Magennis of Iveagh, who was “re-granted” his 22,000 acres of Ulster in 1623, presumably after conversion from Catholicism. This connection is probably hogwash, as nothing is known about the Guinness family before 1690, but the attempt to anchor themselves within the ranks of the old Gaelic nobility is revealing. In part, this was a natural desire to present themselves as being of ancient stock. But searching for a fantastic origin in a long-ago Ireland also betrayed an Anglo-Irish anxiety about where, exactly, home was to be found.

It’s no accident that Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent, arguably the first Irish novel, is concerned with precisely these anxieties. Published in 1800, the satire charts the decline of an Anglo-Irish dynasty as seen through the eyes of the family retainer, Thady Quirk. Quirk — who is either loyal to a fault or completely full of shit, depending on your reading — watches four generations of Rackrents succumb to folly and distraction. Each exhibits the traditional, if exaggerated, maladies of their class: profligacy, litigiousness, absenteeism, cruelty, indebtedness. The Rackrents fail their tenants, who are left at the mercy of viperous middle-men, and who are often forced from their tenancies altogether. Yet they also fail their own flesh and blood. Wives are tortured, heirs are few and far between, and no thought is given to the security of the next generation. Edgeworth, herself of Anglo-Irish stock, turns the increasingly decrepit “Big House”, with its broken windows and leaking roof, into a tiny model of Ireland. Her unspoken question is: who would treat their true home in such a way?

In the end, the whole estate passes into the ownership of Thady’s son, Jason. Young Quirk, who works as the family’s land agent, uses his mastery of property law and accountancy to ease house and lands from Rackrent hands. Acre by acre, stable by lodge, he deploys the English weapons of lawbook and ledger to secure his own landowning dynasty. The scholar George Watson has described the novel as “an Anglo-Irish nightmare”, and whether by accident or design, the same dynamic appears in House of Guinness. While the children squabble, Mr Rafferty, their looming foreman, quietly extends his authority throughout the brewery and into the most private reaches of the family itself.

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How Ireland fetishises history

By Terry Eagleton

Bad dreams needn’t have worried the Guinnesses. They had a great advantage over older Anglo-Irish families, who by the late 19th century relied on ever-diminishing rents to service ever-growing debts. Unlike the others, though, people always wanted to buy what the Guinnesses were selling, and there was always more to sell. You can’t brew up more land, but stout is a truly renewable resource, and the thirst for it is just as inexhaustible. House of Guinness contains some sharp scenes where the daughters of grand, penniless old dynasties deign to marry “a brewer”. The Guinnesses gain access to aristocratic bloodlines, and the aristocrat gains an orangery overlooking the sixpence-sweep of Dublin Bay.

The pedigree aristos got the best of the deal. The show never openly states that the age of Big Houses and huge estates was coming to an end, but the drama is heavy with the sense that time is being called for all but the wealthiest. The generous terms of the 1903 Land Act saw large numbers of the Anglo-Irish sell their estates, often for more than they were worth. Some downsized to Dublin townhouses; others left Ireland for good. Their last show of strength came in 1914, when Anglo-Irishmen made up a third of the British officer corps.

There are still a few of them about, of course, though they tend to live quietly. If the Anglo-Irish are spoken of at all in Ireland today, it is usually in the wry register that Behan employed. Perhaps their continued relevance to contemporary Irish culture lies, above all, in fiction. The Big House novel is now an established genre, presided over by the ghosts of its three greatest practitioners: Elizabeth Bowen, J. G. Farrell, and Molly Keane.

And then there are the houses themselves. Stripped and lonely, shivering on hills or choked by trees, most have been left to rot away. And while the Irish Georgian Society — founded in 1958 by none other than Sir Desmond Guinness — continues to campaign for the preservation of beautiful buildings, much has been lost forever. Few of the Anglo-Irish learned the lesson that the brewing Guinnesses knew so well: the best legacies are liquid.

I’ve counted down the top 50 UnPacked highlights from 2018 – the facts, figures, ideas and events that may not have made the headlines, but which provide a more reliable insight into the forces shaping the future.

Today, numbers 20 to 11:

#20

The widest longevity gap

At a time of intense debate about inequalities between men and women, rich and poor and between other groups and identities, there’s one social divide that goes largely unseen.

Writing in the New York Times, Dhruv Khullar opens our eyes:

“Americans with depression, bipolar disorder or other serious mental illnesses die 15 to 30 years younger than those without mental illness — a disparity larger than for race, ethnicity, geography or socioeconomic status. It’s a gap, unlike many others, that has been growing…”

Obviously, suicide risk plays a part, as do other “unnatural causes”, but that’s not the only reason why people with severe mental illness live shorter lives:

“…they’re much more likely to die of the same things as everyone else: cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and respiratory problems.”

Far from diverting resources away from general healthcare, investing in mental health services is a vital preventative measure.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Flyover Country

#19

How beer could save capitalism

In sector after sector, we see monopolists squeezing out the competition and robots squeezing out the human workforce. Is this the technology-driven future of capitalism?

In the Atlantic, Derek Thompson cheers us up with news of one industry moving in the opposite direction – the US beer industry:

“…in the last decade, something strange and extraordinary has happened. Between 2008 and 2016, the number of brewery establishments expanded by a factor of six, and the number of brewery workers grew by 120 percent. Yes, a 200-year-old industry has sextupled its establishments and more than doubled its workforce in less than a decade.”

Are workers drowning their sorrows? Actually no, Americans are drinking less beer by volume, but they’re paying more for it. Quality has triumphed over quantity, and craftsmanship over automation.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Capitalism

#18

Digital self harm

Anyone who doesn’t see the dark side of social media should acquaint themselves with the concept of ‘digital self harm’.

It’s defined and tentatively quantified in Aaron Kheriaty’s briefing for First Things:

“In the first systematic investigation of this behavior among adolescents, recently published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, Justin Patchin and Sameer Hinduja report their findings from a large, randomly sampled population-based study of 12-to-17-year-olds in the U.S. Of the 5,593 adolescents surveyed, one in twenty admitted to engaging in ‘digital self harm’. Specifically, 6 percent reported that they had ‘anonymously posted something online about myself that was mean.’ Among these, 36 percent said they had done it a few times, and 13 percent said they had done it many times. Likewise, 5 percent responded affirmatively to the statement, ‘I have anonymously cyberbullied myself.’ Among these, 37 percent had done it a few times, and 18 percent had done it many times.”

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Technology

#17

Peter Thiel complains about the rent

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley entrepreneur, is a very rich man, but even he thinks that rent is too high.

Reporting for Yahoo Finance, Julia La Roche quotes remarks Thiel made at an event hosted by the Economic Club of New York:

“One thing I’ve been thinking about as a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley is the vast majority of the capital I give to the companies is just going to landlords. It’s going to commercial real estate and even more to urban slumlords of one sort or another. And that’s an odd thing to be doing as a venture capitalist. That’s so disproportionate…”

Thiel is a libertarian – he’s got no problem with people getting rich through their own efforts. But the landlords of Silicon Valley and other super-productive areas aren’t contributing to that productivity, they’re taking away from it.

Their profits should be taxed accordingly.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Technology

#16

Xue Liang 

You’re being chased through a city. Your pursuers are closing in. What do you do?

Standard procedure is to lose yourself in a crowd. Except that might not work for much longer.

Earlier this year, a fugitive from Chinese justice was arrested at a pop concert in Nanchang. How did the police spot him in a crowd of 60,000 people? In a report for the Washington Post, Amy B Wang explains:

“Details about Ao [the suspect] had been in a national database, and when he had arrived at the stadium, cameras at the entrances with facial-recognition technology had identified him — and flagged authorities…

“‘He was completely shocked when we took him away,’ police officer Li Jin told Xinhua news agency…”

Inevitably, the Chinese state has plans to extend these capabilities – to create a “comprehensive, nationwide surveillance system known as ‘Xue Liang,’ or ‘Sharp Eyes’.”

Sauron would be proud.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Technology

#15

Merkel contemplates a European civil war

In a fascinating piece for Spiegel Online, René Pfister reveals that Angela Merkel has been thinking about the Thirty Years’ War – a devastating conflict that raged across Central Europe from 1618 to 1648.

It was preceded by a long period of calm, ushered in by the Peace of Augsburg, a compromise between the Protestants and Catholics of the Holy Roman Empire, signed in 1555:

“To Merkel, the Peace of Augsburg is much more than some distant historical date. Rather, it is a warning of just how thin the varnish covering civilization really is. Just as people in the late 16th century were erroneous in their belief that the Peace of Augsburg would be enduring, we could be just as mistaken today in the belief that the postwar order, with all its treaties and alliances, serves as a guarantee that the scourge of war will not return.”

The end of the peace can be blamed on the Hapsburg Emperor, Ferdinand II, who tried to impose the will of the strongest power – and its ideology – on the other states.

I wonder if Angela Merkel can think of anything like that in today’s Europe?

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Global Affairs

#14

The self-driving future is a bus(t)

2018 was the year when optimism about automated vehicles turned to pessimism. In March, a pedestrian was hit and killed by a self-driving car in Arizona – a tragedy that symbolises just how far the technology needs to progress before we can trust it. Some experts wonder whether road vehicles will ever go fully driverless.

But if that’s true, what should we make of the news that the Chinese company Baidu has begun mass production of its Apolong self-driving minibus? According to the BBC, the 14-seater vehicle has “no driver’s seat, steering wheel or pedals”, which sounds pretty driverless to me.

The catch is that the Apolong is designed for controlled environments “such as airports and tourist sites.”

But perhaps that’s how we’ll get to the driverless future – via segregated bus routes and not on the open road.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Technology

#13

How technology divides rich from poor

Access to technology has always divided the rich from the poor. It continues to do so today, only now it’s question of whether the latter are over exposed. Writing for the New York Times, Nellie Bowles notes that the children of the poor spend more time glued to screens than the children of the rich:

“Lower-income teenagers spend an average of eight hours and seven minutes a day using screens for entertainment, while higher income peers spend five hours and 42 minutes, according to research by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit media watchdog… Two studies that look at race have found that white children are exposed to screens significantly less than African-American and Hispanic children.”

In another article for the NYT, she reveals that nannies employed by Silicon Valley professionals are instructed to “keep phones, tablets, computers and TVs off and hidden at all times”.

How’s that for hypocrisy?

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Technology

#12

Liberal nationalism

Liberalism and nationalism are portrayed as opposing philosophies – one seen as being ‘open’ and the other as ‘closed’.

Writing for the Guardian, Ivan Krastev reminds is us it wasn’t always this way:

“Remember how nationalists and liberals were allies in the overthrow of communism in 1989… Appealing to national sentiment was critically important as a way of mobilising society against the communist regimes. Poland’s Solidarity movement was not liberal, but a mixed – social and nationalist – coalition that endorsed the values of liberal democracy.”

The history of liberal nationalism goes back much further – it was, for instance, a vital force in the European revolutions of 1848.

Europe’s liberal elites need to rediscover the virtues of positive national self-expression, because in refusing to do so they’ve left open a political space that populist politicians have eagerly exploited.

Read more...

The Year UnPacked: 20 to 11

Flyover Country

#11

China has tech giants too

America’s tech giants are sometimes referred to as GAFA (i.e. Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple). If you include Netflix then they become the FAANGs.

Writing for Wired, Christina Larson implores us not to forget the BATs:

“China’s established internet titans – Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent, sometimes called ‘BAT’ – began as clones of US companies like Google and eBay. But these giants have since evolved in distinct new directions, rather like megafauna evolving new breeds within a Galapagos Islands ecosystem.”

China protects this ecosystem behind various barriers, but it is also aided by the fact that technophilic Chinese consumers provide markets for digital services that are massively bigger than those in the West:

“In a country where personal cheques and credit cards never went mainstream, paying with your smartphone has become the norm: in 2016, China’s mobile payment market was 50 times the size of that in the US, according to research firm iResearch.”

Meanwhile Europe, which has neither BATs nor FAANGs, is looking rather toothless.

Suggested reading

The innovation game: Can China regain its lead over the West?

By Peter Franklin

Now read the top 10 of The Year UnPacked