Malcolm Gladwell is wrong about the Irish

Malcolm Gladwell, the curly-haired, counter-intuitive guru of modern thought who wrote The Tipping Point and Blink, certainly has a readable style, and often a striking way of turning received notions on their head. His latest book, David and Goliath — about the inspiring advantages of perceived disadvantage — is accompanied by a much-hyped speaking tour, the blurb for which describes him as a ‘global phenomenon’. In it, among other topics, he plunges into the origin of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, but the location wasn’t his first choice. He recently told the Telegraph’s literary editor, Gaby Wood, that he had wanted to write about Israel but chose Northern Ireland instead because it was ‘safer’, as the English had ‘a greater willingness to be self-critical’ (in other words, were less liable to launch an aggressive counter-attack upon Gladwell’s reputation). The sense of safety might be part of the problem: fairly quickly, the Ireland foray slips into terrible complacency.