My aunty and uncle said we were too young to go to the Stardust yet, but promised that when I came up next time we could go, we would be both sixteen then. Continue reading
Filed under Fiction …
Mary Murphy’s Christmas Pudding
As I was growing up in Edenderry, near Tullamore, in Ireland, my mother always made a Christmas pudding. The smells of the pudding, wrapped in cloth, pervaded the house with the scent of Christmas approaching. Continue reading
On Rereading The Country Girls
I decided to read classics I had not read, and to reread some that I had. I was interested to see if books I had loved on a first reading when I was young, remained beloved. Continue reading
Four new Irish novels
John Boyne returns to his earlier Striped Pyjamas book and we meet Shane McGowan’s young sister. Continue reading
Remembering Hugh O’Flaherty
With honours from the US, Britain and Israel, he is almost forgotten in Ireland, sixty years after he died. Continue reading
Maggie O’Farrell’s Latest
‘I call that piece a wonder now; Fra Pandolf’s hands
Worked busily a day, and there she stands.’ Continue reading
Seasonal Poems
Vermeer would have made much of it Continue reading
Irish-Australian Gothic
McKinty’s The Island is a page-turner, and often quite chilling and surprising in the turns it takes. Continue reading
What’s On
Upcoming Melbourne Irish Studies Seminar on Heaney’s visit to Australia in 1994. Continue reading
What’s On
Bloomsday events in Melbourne. Continue reading
Tinteán 