Flags have become increasingly controversial in recent years. The US flag has become shorthand for MAGA and the Irish flag is under increasing strain, with its appearance on flagpoles all over Ireland signalling that immigrants are unwelcome

However the history of our national symbol is equally contested – who first combined the green, orange and white, whose idea was it, what did it mean and why were other symbols rejected?

Historian John Crotty is the author of a new book on the tricolour.

The tricolour's contested origins show how myths are made

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