Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
A Life Worth Living
‘It’s a dangerous way of looking at the world, which is partly what “The Rest of Our Lives” starts out with – Tom thinking you can measure a marriage and a life in terms of grades.’
O’Connell and Liberal Nationalism
O’Connell believed in the separation of church and state. In 1837 he denounced traditionalist Don Carlos, fearing he would restore ‘that disastrous connection between church and state which for two centuries has plunged Spain into the deepest moral degradation’.
‘Dove Cottage’
A new poem by the current Ireland Professor of Poetry.
Holding Quicksilver
Bernard Williams showed that analytic philosophy could be insightful and engaging as well as precise and rigorous.
Make the Gruel Thick and Slab
A new, engaging study of Shakespeare’s tragedies opens up deeper, more general questions as well as a way of thinking better and farther about the complex matter of living.
Myth-busting
It is not easy to challenge the Resistance myth in France, which has shifted from being military and patriotic to humanitarian and ecumenical. But this book does.
The Rise of Eng Lit.
A monumental treatment of the rise of English literature as a university discipline in Britain from the 1860s to the 1960s.
Anatomy of Envy
Playing with envy is like playing with fire. It just isn’t worth it and should come with a mental health warning.
Gaelic Warriors
An authoritative, accessible study of the evolution and persistent appeal of the Fianna, the warrior-band that included Fionn mac Cumhaill and his son, Oisín.
Joyce and Parnell
A large and ambitious attempt to shed new light on Joyce’s work fails to convince.
Rereadings 3: Contra Phony
It is as if Holden Caufield is talking to you directly, as his privileged confidant, enlisted in his war against phoniness.
Isaiah Berlin’s Legacy
What’s alive and what’s dead in the thought of Isaiah Berlin? A new book argues there is plenty of mileage left in the arch fox.