I see Afghanistan and Bangladesh are competing in the 'Backwards Third-World Dump'

[Sir C]

Who's 'us'? No Romans in Ireland, pal.

They weren't fúcking stupid, were they?

[Burney]

They weren't fúcking stupid, were they?

There is a theory, of course, that between the Fall of the Roman Empire and the rise of Charlemagne, Ireland was about the only remaining European repository of what we would have called Western knowledge. That without the Irish we'd have lost the lot.

This is balls, of course (ignoring as it does the influence of the Eastern Roman Empire apart from anything else), but still.