Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Hopkins’s Wound
Gerard Manley Hopkins was careless of the fate of his poems, treated his muse like a slut and her children as an unwanted and vaguely sinful burden.
A Millionaire of Words
Joyce’s funny, moving and infuriating masterpiece should send us, not into the cold and sterile embrace of the examination room, but out again into the warm and throbbing world.
And Another Thing
The most recent translation of WG Sebald’s work offers the expected pleasure of his engaging prose style and an introduction to the world of some intriguing German writers.
A Tearless People
The year is 1937 and the place Moscow, one of the key settings in European history and a fault line in the history of civilisation.
Breaking The Union
A collection of essays about the 1913 Dublin Lockout impresses across a wide range of fields.
1916 As Spectacle
In an age when martyrdom is demonised and tagged with notions of fanaticism and people are reluctant to protest for a cause let alone die for one, 1916 presents an easy target.
Trompe l’Oeil
All is very far from what it seems in a literary mystery novel by poet Ciaran Carson set in Belfast and Paris.
Street Smart
Lyrics have been defined as short poems written to the accompaniment of a musical instrument, but should Paul Muldoon’s lyrics be judged primarily as poems or as songs?
The Wild Harvest
Before the inexorable advance of the conifer, the picking of wild berries on Irish hillsides often provided a welcome seasonal boost in income for poorer rural families.
Sacred Egoist
The Italian critic and editor Roberto Calasso enjoys a considerable reputation among the literary-critical elite, but how much substance or originality is there in his anti-rational musings?
A Moralist in the Newsroom
As well as being a novelist and philosopher, Albert Camus was, at various times of his life, a journalist, working as reporter, editor and columnist. It was a profession about which he held very strong views.
Not telling
Edna O’Brien’s memoir refuses to satisfy our curiosity or submit to the demands for interpretation. She has fought others’ desire for control from childhood, and in her eighties is still fighting.