BBC News By Sanchia Berg image copyrightAlain BUU Tony Blair's admission of the British government's culpability over the Irish Famine was neither written nor approved by the former PM before it was sent, National Archive papers show. Mr Blair's private secretary Sir John Holmes wrote it but could not reach him for final approval, according to files. The 1997 statement was welcomed as an overdue recognition of British failure. More than a million people died between 1845-52 in the famine, when the entire island of Ireland was part of the UK. And about two million more people emigrated over a decade.