For Ulster Protestants, riven by division since the fall of Terence O’Neill as prime minister of Northern Ireland in 1969, the recent troubles have seen their future steadily being conceded by default. Where there was certainty, there is now confusion; where there was once leadership, there are now only leaders. Not surprisingly, there have been wistful glances back to the mythical heroes of the past, in particular to Sir Edward Carson, who had steered them through the home rule crisis of 1912–14 to the promised land of Northern Ireland. Carson not only mobilised all Ulster Protestants, but also organised a largely successful rebellion and in time squared the circle to become one of the few rebels in English history to go on to be a law lord. Moreover, he was also a British leader, being four times in office, twice in the cabinet, and for twenty years one of the dominating figures in Tory politics. It is this duality that made Carson’s position exceptional in Anglo-Irish relations and contributed to the immense authority he periodically enjoyed. Indeed, in Ulster before the Great War his sway assumed near-charismatic proportions. Viewed as a case study in leadership, therefore, his career was, in terms of British politics, unique.

Gerald Balfour's appointment as chief secretary for Ireland on 4 July 1895 was as unexpected as it was intriguing. Recording the event in his diary Sir Edward Hamilton, Gladstone's former private secretary and now assistant financial secretary to the Treasury, described it as ‘quite a surprise and a considerable experiment’, and the Carlton Club, noted more for its relentless suspicion of Irish chief secretaries than its welcoming of surprises and experiments, grumbled ominously. After all Gerald Balfour had led an uneventful academic life at Cambridge followed by a back-bench career in the house of commons that had proved neither prominent nor promising, and he clearly owed his new position to the support of his illustrious brother, Arthur, and the unbridled nepotism of his uncle, Lord Salisbury, the prime minister. Like his avuncular patron, he soon developed a weakness for ‘blazing indiscretion’ and in his first major policy speech to his Leeds constituents after his election he spoke of ‘killing home rule with kindness’ This rather glib phrase provoked a furore among the Irish nationalists and aroused the scepticism of many Irish unionists, though, as Gerald Balfour subsequently protested, he was merely echoing the strategy his brother had pursued with full unionist support in the 1880s.