Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
The Spin of Things
Darkly optimistic poems salvaged from the suburban humdrum
A Contented Heart
Poems of love and loss articulated in a spirit of quiet affirmation
Hack and Hero
Leslie McFarlane: the career of a prolific and successful hack writer
Vivid Faces
The reputation of ‘Ulysses’ in Ireland during its first century
A Diplomatic Odyssey
The ‘soft power’ of promoting the literary heritage of Ireland abroad
The Gift
Howard Jacobson on what he got from his Mancunian Jewish upbringing
A Tonic for Our Times
Margaret Atwood’s astute, sparkling takes on social and literary matters
‘I Gave Them a Sword’
The Watergate affair and the cover-up that brought down Richard Nixon
Good Things
Reading the cookbook as an instance of self-expression and social display.
Doing the Continental
The European dream of perpetual peace
Following Henry Joy
The life and death of a martyr for revolutionary secular republicanism
Poetic Bears and Others
An anthology marked by warmth, bigness of heart and generosity of spirit