Friday 6 February | 8pm (Doors 7.30pm)
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A Steinbeck Festival Event
STEINBECK FESTIVAL 2026
For And Against A United Ireland | Mark Carruthers in conversation with Sam McBride
Friday 6 February | 8pm (Doors 7.30pm) | Tickets £15 | Unreserved tiered seating
Northern Ireland’s finest interviewer, Mark Carruthers, brings his incomparable skills to bear in conversation with award-winning journalist and author Sam McBride about the provocative and timely book For and Against a United Ireland, co-written with Fintan O’Toole. Sam McBride is Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and the Sunday Independent, and a contributor to The Economist. His work is known for its clarity, rigour, and insight into Northern Irish politics and public life. Together, the book examines one of the defining questions of our time, presenting informed arguments from both sides of the constitutional debate in a balanced and accessible way.
About Sam McBride
Sam McBride is the Northern Ireland Editor of the Belfast Telegraph and Sunday Independent newspapers. He also writes on Northern Ireland for The Economist. He is a former political editor of the Belfast News Letter and has made a BBC film about the Northern Bank robbery. His first book, Burned: The Inside Story of the ‘Cash-for-Ash’ Scandal and Northern Ireland’s Secretive New Elite, became a Sunday Times bestseller. Sam is a regular broadcaster on Northern Ireland politics and lives in Belfast with his wife and two young children.
