Hi, you're listening to one of our Irish Passport half pints, extra content episodes that we make especially to say thank you to our Patreon supporters, and your own luck.

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In this episode, for the 100th anniversary of the World War I Armistice, we're taking a look at the complicated and sometimes controversial relationship

Ireland has had with that ubiquitous little red poppy that has become so associated with

the war in the UK. If you want to access our whole library of half pint extra content episodes,

you can head on over right now to www. patreon.com slash the Irish passport and become a supporter of the podcast today.

Okay, I'll pass you over to Naomi. Enjoy the episode. I believe poppies are my first memory of the concept of charitable giving.

That's because until the age of six, I went to school in London,

where my parents, both from North Dublin, moved as emigrants in the 80s. I have a very

textile memory of poppies being sold from charity boxes at the school doors, chunky British

pounds in exchange for the chunky black centres and papery leaves.

I wore one on my school jumper, I'm sure.

Everyone did.

I don't remember understanding why except a vague belief that this was something for the greater good.

Then we moved home to Dublin and I didn't have to think about poppies.

Poppies were just a flower.

That was until I found myself

back in London as a grown-up working as a journalist. And that was when I became aware of the

poppy as the subject of a perennial culture war, an occasion for the rehearsal of irreconcilably

opposed positions. The same familiar arguments are aired ritualistically every year when the poppy season

hits in the build-up to Armistice Day, which commemorates the end of World War I on November 11th.

If you're someone in the public eye in Britain and you don't wear a poppy, you run the risk of becoming

...