In a recent Irishman's Diary, Kevin Myers applied himself to a familiar topic: the moral depravity of falsely representing Ireland's past. "Telling lies" about Irish history can have a pernicious effect on both the present and the future, Mr Myers contended. For instance, glorifying wanton violence in the period 1916-1923 encourages the indulgence of subsequent atrocities committed in Northern Ireland since 1970.
On this reasoning, historical misrepresentation is not merely negligent; it is, in fact, inexcusably culpable.
Unfortunately, Mr Myers seized upon a passage from my book Peace in Ireland: The War of Ideas to illustrate his point. In a chapter on the events surrounding the War of Independence, I indicated that British press coverage of IRA outrages between 1919 and 1921 had an impact on the conduct of the Treaty negotiations.
I suggested that the publicity surrounding guerrilla atrocities was not conducive to an easy diplomatic rapport between British negotiators and Irish republicans.
From this fact, Kevin Myers drew the conclusion that because I mentioned the reporting of such outrages, I must have been implying that they did not in fact take place - which, of course, they did.
Mr Myers then went further, arguing that I presented republican violence in the same period as purely reactive in nature: a simple response to the actions of the Irish constabulary and the British forces. As a matter of fact I did not make this claim.
I find it curious that Mr Myers should misrepresent my thesis in an article addressed to the problem of misrepresentation in Irish history.
But it gets worse. In picking over a couple of paragraphs in this chapter from my book, Kevin Myers seems not to have noticed that the whole point of the surrounding argument is to highlight the massively consequential role which misrepresentation has played throughout the course of modern Irish history. The grim shadow of the conflict in Northern Ireland still hangs over the writing of Irish history.
As a result, historical analysis is frequently consumed by the kind of passionate intensity more usually associated with righteous causes. With the outlook for Northern Ireland still, on balance, better now than it has been for a generation, hopefully this intensity might steadily be defused.
But in the meantime, self-congratulatory moralising - on either side - just will not do.
Dr Richard Bourke lectures in the history department at Queen Mary, University of London.