Kate Nash Reworks 1994 'Famine' to Challenge English Amnesia Over 1 Million Irish Deaths
Updated
Updated · bbc.co.uk · Aug 5
Kate Nash Reworks 1994 'Famine' to Challenge English Amnesia Over 1 Million Irish Deaths
3 articles · Updated · bbc.co.uk · Aug 5
Summary
Kate Nash has released a cover of Sinéad O'Connor's 1994 song "Famine," adding a new verse to confront what she calls English ignorance of Britain’s role in the Irish catastrophe.
The project grew from Nash’s own mixed English-Irish background and from revisiting O'Connor’s lyrics after her 2023 death, which Nash said exposed a history lesson she never received at school or home.
Historian Enda Delaney backed her criticism as "fair comment," saying Anglo-Irish history is not routinely taught in England even though about 1 million people died in Ireland in the 1840s when it was part of the UK.
The Department for Education said the curriculum already allows teaching on 19th-century Britain and Ireland, including the Great Famine, and said a revamped framework will better support difficult topics.
Nash’s Belfast performance and recording place her in a longer tradition of second-generation Irish artists probing identity, while reviving debate over whether Britain adequately acknowledges the famine and its legacy.