Had Casement been a conventional man, married with a wife and family in Ireland, he would never have been free to have travelled as he did in such difficult realms, and re-defined so radically, at such cost to himself, and at such a critical point in history, geo-politics and social justice agendas. Continue reading
Women trekked over uncertain ground, took shelter where they could, panned for gold, or tended the campfire for their menfolk. They conceived, gave birth and reared children under canvas in searing heat and dust in summer and in the cold damp in winter… Continue reading
The protagonist’s relationship with her mother is grotesquely deformed by her mother’s evangelical Catholicism, as was her mother’s, by her father. Continue reading
A small group of Irish Famine girls, whose average age was sixteen, is the subject of this lyrical and captivating story by Evelyn Conlon. Continue reading
Whether his apparently tin ear in dealing with victims and their families is personal inadequacy or an effect of his hierarchical remoteness from his flock is hard to say but maybe, as Marr reports, it is because ‘He’s Roman and that’s the Roman way’. Continue reading
Anyone who has attempted to draw a knot would know how difficult it is to discern the curves and tucks of hempen lines. King lists the many kinds of knots he paints …. Continue reading
In this highly readable memoir, Mary, in conjunction with her daughter, Tessa, narrates how a ‘reserved freckle-faced bookworm’ (p.26) from Ballina ‘a small town in a small country on the western periphery of Europe’, became one of Ireland’s most recognisable and celebrated leaders, both domestically and internationally. Continue reading
The poems in Irish illustrate the directness of the language, its peculiar music, its power to evoke a history which seldom finds a voice in English… Continue reading
Sexton is not one to pull his punches… Continue reading
There is pathos, irony and social comment in a voice that is accessible and fond. Continue reading
Tinteán 