Representing Belfast's pasts

From port to commercial centre, and from textile town to centre of shipbuilding, Belfast has adapted, chameleon-like, to changing circumstances. Each of these changes has resulted in a reimagination of the city’s past to make it useable for the present. That has taken many forms. As the town grew in the nineteenth century, local historians, most particularly George Benn, provided Belfast with a narrative that charted and explained its past and charted the topographical development from smal...