Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
A Voracious Reader
Peering into Stalin’s soul from the scribbles in the margins of his books
One Weird Guy
Peter Thiel and the tech giants’ pursuit of political power
The Bouncing Czech
The outrageous life and strange death of publishing tycoon Robert Maxwell
Let the Music Speak
Traditional fiddler Martin Hayes’s journey to musical self-expression
This Is Who He Is
The West has no reason whatever to be surprised by Putin’s invasion
In the Dirt Lay Justice
Derry’s Bloody Sunday and the long fight for justice and accountability
The Mystery of Moll
Linguistic paradoxes and the evasion of identity in ‘Moll Flanders’
It’s Not All Bad
Term report: wealth, good; population, v. good; equality, could do better
The Night Walker
As the lamps come on, thoughts of a connoisseur of the crepuscular
Getting Even
A personal history of the new Irish feminism of the 1970s
An Teanga on Tour
Gaelic Ireland’s many encounters with continental European culture
A German Requiem
Fashion model, rocker, poet, addict: the strange life of the singer Nico