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
He will not study Famine roads on any map in school.
I discovered those myself much later, Trevelyan’s twisted
dictate, the futile labour of those arteries tapering
into the ether, Continue reading
An invigorating history and historiography of feminist activism in Ireland in second wave. 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
A rich plum pudding of a novel crammed with characters from the Joyce biographies and the novels, allusions and bits of text. Continue reading
I grew up in County Monaghan, in Ulster and I have been profoundly influenced also by Patrick Kavanagh and Seamus Heaney and the love of landscape and placename. Continue reading
The premise of Saskia Levy Rogers’ book is to provide a new look at old wisdoms, with an Irish cultural twist. Continue reading
Language has always been of interest to Colin Ryan as a way of shaping and expressing the world, and he began writing quite early. Continue reading
History arrives at Tom’s door in the form of two younger detectives, who are investigating the unsolved murder of Father Thaddeus Matthews. Continue reading
Mise Aisling By Anne Casey After Eavan Boland’s ‘Mise Éire’ I lost my tonguelong ago in exile,refound it in a ghost childcalling for her mother. Elizabeth O’Brien casting offto the deep: Bíonn súil le muirach ní bhíonn súil le tír(hope in the sea,no hope in the land)as she clutchesher grizzling Eliza,slipping away. I am the … Continue reading
Tinteán 