Sir,—I read with interest Robert Ballagh’s review of the Atlas of the Great Irish Famine (HI 21.2, March/April 2013, ‘Big book’), in particular the reference to Milton Friedman. While researching a short biography of Terence Bellew McManus many years ago I came across the following sentence in an editorial of the London Times during the Famine years: ‘Thanks to a bountiful Providence, the Irishman on the banks of the Shannon will soon be as rare a sight as the Red Indian on the banks of the Hudson’. Make no mistake about it, elements of the British establishment positively gloated at the prospects offered by the Famine.—Yours etc.,
GERRY McALISTER
Canada
