Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Made in China
Dave Eggers’s beautifully written new novel offers a melancholy and dreamlike portrait of America in decline.
Debating the Nation
An anthology of the most important Dáil debates of the last sixty years covers vital economic matters, Northern Ireland and the nation’s ongoing difficulties with matters of sexual morality and their consequences.
The Harvest In
Seamus Heaney’s conception of poetry meant he had to trust that his disciplined tending of the ground would lead to harvest, that if the writing self was kept open the poems would come through.
Guilty Truant
A biography of the celebrated writer and director Jonathan Miller finds a man who has never forgiven himself for abandoning his first career in medicine.
The Sexual Caterwaul
It is difficult, in a permissive society, to define what is obscene. But to find at least something obscene shows that you are a sentient person.
Interrupted Lives
Fate dealt harshly with both JG Farrell and Stewart Parker, two hugely gifted Irish writers who died in their forties
Oscar Wilde and the Irish
Far from being a marginal figure in independent Ireland, Wilde was viewed with considerable interest and good will.
Weimar Stories
The German-Dutch writer Hans Keilson reached a new English-speaking audience when his novels from the 1930s were reissued. This rediscovery came when Keilson was 100.
West Cork and The Writing of History
In reply to Dr Eve Morrison
An Awfully Big Adventure
Patrick Leigh Fermor was a man of great talents who inspired affection and deep friendship among those who knew him and who was fortunate in the friends he made.
Understanding the Serbs
David Ralph’s recent essay on the war in Bosnia merely added to the mountain of incomprehension that British journalists raised about the region’s war.
The Noble Earl
A historical novel based on a fourteenth century Hiberno-Norman chieftain reminds us that Ireland was a multilingual and multicultural country long before any of us were born.