Balkan diplomacy – Frank McNally on hosting a Bulgarian journalist for election weekend

On Saturday afternoon, with the counts barely begun, I had to do a short video interview on the elections for a visiting Bulgarian journalist, Nikolay Zabov.

It was too early to be definitive but it was already obvious that that many prognosticators, most notably WB Yeats, had been proved wrong.

The news from Dublin, I told Bulgaria, was that the centre had held, yet again. Mere anarchy was likely to be confined to some eccentric transfer patterns and the election of a few extremists to local councils.

They take Europe seriously in Sofia. Zabov was one of 27 journalists dispatched by the BTA news agency to the other EU capitals. As I noted apologetically, it was unlikely this compliment had been returned by many of the destination countries.

Simon’s swansong – Frank McNally on the passing of a much-loved Dublin café

---

Horns of a dilemma (continued) – Frank McNally on a Dutch-Irish art mystery, now being investigated in The Hague

---

Little Bighorn of a dilemma – Frank McNally on a mystery Monaghan man who followed Custer to Montana

---

Hose maketh the man – Frank McNally on a male sartorial dilemma

---

The stakes are clearly higher for Bulgaria, which has enjoyed some economic benefits since joining the EU in 2007 but remains one of Europe’s poorest countries.

It is also enduring a prolonged demographic crisis, which shows no signs of relenting. From a peak of nine million in 1989, when communism collapsed, the population fell to 6.5 million in 2021 and is falling still. Whatever some election candidates would have us believe about Ireland, Bulgaria is far from full.

Anyway, to judge from Nikolay, BTA got good value from their foreign emissaries. Like most young journalists now, he multitasks as cameraman, sound recordist, editor, and writer.

He had also gone to the trouble of finding out how to pronounce such party names as An Rabharta Glas, noticing in the process that although Irish may not be much spoken here, we go to the trouble of having three dialects, all with different pronunciations.

If it was any consolation, I assured him, he was already more expert on how to say An Rabharta Glas than 99 per cent of the electorate.

Among the other tasks awaiting him, he said, was to sit through a Zoom meeting in which all 27 reporters would present three-minute versions of their local packages. I winced at the thought but wished him luck.

Irish journalistic interest in Bulgaria may have waned in recent times. But as I reminded the visitor, it had at least one glorious chapter in history, thanks a Limerick man who now has a street named after him – James Bourchier Boulevard – in one of the leafier parts of Sofia.

Bourchier (1850–1920) has also been commemorated there at various times by a plaque, a brand of cigarettes, a series of stamps, and most recently a Metro station.

But perhaps the most impressive monument is his grave, at an Orthodox cemetery in the Rhodope Mountains, a place sacred to Bulgarian Christianity, where he was buried after a state funeral in 1920, and with the personal approval of the king.

Educated (like Samuel Beckett and Oscar Wilde) at Portora Royal, Enniskillen, and Trinity College Dublin, Bourchier would probably have become a lawyer but for hearing difficulties – the legacy of a cold he suffered in childhood following an attack of measles. The same problem also thwarted a subsequent career as a teacher at Eton, although he persisted for 10 years.

But it was through journalism he discovered his adopted country. And it was through journalism he acquired the extraordinary influence in Balkan affairs that made him the envy of diplomats, up to the time when he acted as Bulgaria’s unofficial representative at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919.

During Bourchier’s early years as a correspondent, the head of the [London] Times foreign department had to defend him against official criticism from Sofia: reminding him that, in journalism, this was a badge of honour. But through his influence in the Balkans, he would eventually earn another badge prized by many Irishmen: the distrust of the British establishment.

By the end of his career, the Limerickman’s critics included the UK’s ambassador in Sofia: here – as summarised for the foreign secretary in 1919 – complaining about “Mr J.D. Bourchier. . . who, after too long a residence in Bulgaria had learned to regard himself as infallible and, possibly owning to his growing aural infirmity, was apt to grasp only one side of a question – that which appealed to him personally.”

The ambassador added: “I say the above advisedly, being aware that in many localities in this country the name of Bourchier is revered. . . At one village, a bed where he slept is, I am credibly informed, regarded by the inhabitants as almost a shrine, where one could expect to find candles burning.”

Bourchier was among the subjects I discussed with Nikolay over pints of Guinness on Sunday evening. I had promised to show him a few quintessential Dublin pubs.

So in the spirit of the weekend, we gave our first preference to McDaid’s before transferring strategically to Kehoe’s of South Anne Street. The plan at one point was to continue our preferences all the way down to Grogan’s and perhaps even the Palace. Alas, those were soon eliminated after it emerged that Nikolay still had work to do before bedtime.