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Ireland’s Call: Detailed map plots passage through tortuous Brexit labyrinth

Stephen Collins diligently plots Ireland’s impressive handling of the onerous path through never-ending negotiations

Leo Varadkar, the then Taoiseach and Boris Johnson, the then British prime minister in 2019: ‘I always figured he was the kind of person that you would be able to do a deal with,’ Varadkar said of Johnson. Picture: Getty

Leo Varadkar found it excruciatingly difficult to make small talk with Theresa May. “That’s a beautiful bracelet you have on,” the then Taoiseach remarked hopefully to the then British prime minister before one of their many interminable conversations about Brexit. The stony silence he received in response must surely have felt symbolic.

Vignettes such as this provide welcome light relief in Ireland’s Call, Stephen Collins’s painstaking reconstruction of how this country handled its greatest foreign ...