You may have read the other day that my colleague Nuala O'Faolain is upping and going to live in the North, and write from there, at the editor's request. The editor has pointed to a demonstrable growth of contact between the two communities, "yet at the same time, North and South are worlds still largely unknown to each other." So the idea is that through her column Nuala might help bring the daily life of unremarkable people in the North into the understanding of the South.

The very same afternoon as Nuala got her marching orders, wasn't I myself called up to the editor's lair, and before I knew it, had agreed to go North, too. That's how persuasive the fellow is.

I wasn't too happy initially, but under some gentle pressure said I would spend two nights in a B & B off Parnell Square and file 500 words if I got back safely.

But this wasn't what the editor had in mind. No. He wanted me to settle properly on the other side of the Liffey, to immerse myself in "the culture of the Northsider, from Summerhill to Killester, the North Wall to Darndale, from Cabra to Coolock, Dollymount to Kilbarrack, and the Tolka Valley to West Finglas".

Only in this way, he insisted, living in a different jurisdiction, experiencing life from another perspective, could I hope to get under the Northsider's skin, and "help forge a way of knowing that might build a bridge for closer contact."

I told him Mary McAleese had a lot to answer for, and what was wrong with O'Connell Bridge anyway? I then offered to rent a townhouse at Howth Harbour and immerse myself in the culture of the Northsider from Clontarf to Castleknock, Sutton to Portmarnock, Kinsealy to the Malahide Estuary including Gibney's public house, and Offington Manor to the Carrickbrack Road.

We eventually came to a compromise, and I will soon be filing regular reports from The Donahies.

All right, not very funny.

There is a lot of renewed interest in the paintings of Winston Churchill, a large collection of which is now on show in London. The exhibition has apparently caused a rethink among some critics, with one concluding that "he really was an artist".

Adolf Hitler was also a keen painter, but according to a Reuters report in this newspaper, "The difference was that Hitler, thwarted as an artist, went into politics, while Churchill, triumphant in war, turned to painting to relax."

No doubt there are lessons to be learned here, in terms of both politics and art, but the simplistic Reuters triumphalism is a bit hard to take. It is as if we should all rejoice that not only did Churchill hammer the Huns, but he now turns out to be the superior artist, too. We shall out-paint them on the beaches. Hurrah for the Allies.

Interesting, too, is the implication that a "thwarted" person is less likely to succeed in the creative area than the successful and self-satisfied character who tosses off a few canvases by way of relaxation.

This is very much a notion of our time, that the best art springs from comfortable circumstances and surroundings: the image of the brilliant eccentric artist starving in a garret is well gone.

But in the early years of this century there was a far better appreciation of the frustrated artist as troubled outsider than is generally realised.

The young Hitler fitted this picture well. A failure in school, he took few steps towards actually realising his dreams of becoming an artist. And he was by all accounts a rather nasty, isolated, angry, spiteful and passionate fellow, full of fantasies about escaping his poverty and failure in Linz and Vienna, where he scraped a miserable living by painting postcards and advertisements.

Today he would be acceptable to few if any art schools. But what's hard to understand is why, since he so well fitted the perception of the young artist at the time, Adolf was twice turned down for entry to Vienna's Academy of Fine Arts.

Perhaps the Academy might yet be blamed for Hitler's rise to power, and various other art colleges castigated for accepting so many polite, normal, well-qualified but hopelessly untalented students, some of whom might otherwise have gone on to do extremely well in politics.