Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
The State of Us
To be ignorant of what occurred before you were born is to remain always a child. – Cicero The late twentieth century saw the fall of both Homo Sovieticus in Russia and, a little less noticed in the wider world, Homo Catholicus in Ireland. Autocratic nationalism replaced the former, forms of liberalism the latter….
Singing Ireland’s Song
Books drawn on in this essay include: Bard of Erin, The Life of Thomas Moore, by Ronan Kelly, Penguin Ireland, 624 pp, £25.00, ISBN: 978-1844881437 Memoirs of Captain Rock, by Thomas Moore, Longman 1824, Field Day 2008, 328 pp, €25.00, ISBN: 978-0946755370 Captain Rock Detected, by Mortimer O’Sullivan, T Cadell, 1824, 450 pp, With…
A Place for the Arts
In 1921, the second Dáil innovatively nominated a minister for fine arts, Count Horace Plunkett, and two staff. In his nineteen weeks in office, Plunkett organised one public event, a sexcentenary celebration of Dante. Then his ministry was subsumed into…
Misrepresentations
In the September issue of the Dublin Review of Books, Emmet O’Connor describes my book United Nation – the case for integrating Ireland as a “little Panglossian”, with “excessive length” and a “Pollyanna character”. Unfortunately, he misrepresented the fundamental thesis, and much of the content, of the work. It is based on a premise…
A Restless Imagination
Frank McGuinness is a writer of openness and adventure. Openness to form: while best known as a playwright, while highly regarded as a poet since the 1990s, he has made forays into other genres, writing short fiction in the early…
Inventing the Republic? II
As might be expected, the immediate response to the Rising of those that were or would soon become the leading Irish writers was probably as complex as that of the Irish public more generally. If a generalisation might be risked,…
Idols and Good Old Gods
The arrival of Christianity in Ireland and the unhelpful notion of ‘paganism’
Changing the Question
The triumph of liberal Britain, which survived the eclipse of the party
Percy at the Wake
The troubadour who mangled ‘Moore’s Melodies’ and inspired Joyce
Joyce’s Eye
Modernism and the influence of ‘cinematicity’ on perception
Observing Proportion
The hyphenated music of Maurice Scully’s shadowy airs
Shipyard Radical
The life of Belfast trade unionist and revolutionary socialist James Baird