Beads of rain streak the window beyond which there is a violet tint in the sky as dusk begins to fall. Dim telegraph poles slip by. Then the chequerboard of yellow and black at the edge of a small town, and bubbled letters caught in the floodlights of an AstroTurf pitch. Continue reading
Catherine is a direct descendant of Arthur Guinness who started the stout, (she and Wayne got special treatment at the brewery), and a grand-daughter of Harry Guinness who was a leader alongside Roger Casement and Edmund Morel in opposing Belgian slavery in the Congo. (In 2017 Catherine wrote a stunning book, Rubber Justice, about him.) Continue reading
The Revelation of Ireland may have more in common with ripped-from-the-headlines journalism than considered, long-view history, but is no less valuable and engaging for all that. Continue reading
Like Heaney, I too was catapulted back to the powerful impact of reading Wilde’s De Profundis, also penned in Reading Gaol, on me aged 20. Continue reading
Go see the movie for the breathtaking landscape and the solid acting of Gabriel Byrne and the young stars Anne Skelly, Fionn O’Shea, and Ferdia Walshe Peelo, Continue reading
In reviewing this important book about Irish who have migrated to Australia since 1945, I have two messages. Firstly, Patricia O’Connor and Fidelma McCorry have broken new ground with a solid and stimulating book. Continue reading
The wicked history of ‘Monto’ spreads itself accommodatingly from the 1860s up to the 1950s. ‘Monto’ was, at one time, so it is claimed, to be the largest redlight district in Europe. It is estimated that there were at times up to 1,600 prostitutes working there. Continue reading
The sheer distance between Ireland and Australia and the cost of the 12,000 mile passage for example meant that Australia was spared the ‘hundreds and thousands of refugees…ragged, starving and diseased, that were cast up on the shores of Great Britain and North America.’ Continue reading
Little of that inheritance was recorded in the new country, but books like this give a vivid impression of what came and what was lost. The Australian links in the material presented here are interesting. In one story a landlord declares that if any of his workers steal even a lamb they will be transported. Continue reading
She used a blue biro pen and had numbered the pages on small, plain, lined notepaper…I was pleased to see, sometimes, the smudged ring of a teacup or saucer imprinted on the page. I ould see her in the kichen getting a cup of tea as she wrote to me on a Sunday night. Continue reading
Tinteán 