Buttering up the British: Irish Exports and the Tourist Gaze

This paper argues that the advertising of Irish exports in the 1960s provided for their consumers a form of ‘tourism without travel’. (1) This concept is borrowed from Mark McGovern, who uses it to describe the experience of the consumer of the ‘Irish pub experience’ in his article ‘”The cracked pint glass of the servant”: the Irish pub, Irish identity and the tourist eye’ in Michael Cronin and Barbara O’Connor (eds) Irish tourism: image, culture, and identity. Clevedon; Buffalo, N.Y.: Channel View Publications, 2003 In particular, Kerrygold butter acted as an especially authentic souvenir of Ireland because it was, as the ads still claim today, ‘made of Ireland’.