Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Getting Known
A memoir of Patrick Kavanagh, the reflections of Thomas McCarthy
The Banana Bunch
Vargas Llosa’s study of the overthrow of democracy and reform in Guatemala
At last to Ithaca
Derek Mahon: a poetic style balanced between levity and profundity
Preaching Poppycock
Yeats’s authoritarianism: the Rapallo circle and Italian fascism
What Spies Do
Sean Bourke and the springing from jail of Russian agent George Blake
The Book in the World
Should ‘Ulysses’ be feted as a great novel, or a great something else?
The City and the Book
The city centred: the importance of the culture of Dublin in ‘Ulysses’
The Necessity of Yeats
Joseph M Hassett writes: The twenty-eighth day of January 2022 marks the eighty-third anniversary of the death of WB Yeats. Anniversaries remind us to step outside the relentless flow of time and ponder a moment of significance. Anniversaries of deaths are especially meaningful because absence heightens focus on essence. They are fruitful occasions to heed…
A Revolutionary’s Life
An affectionate portrait of Ernie O’Malley in war and in exile
Family Troubles
Nobel laureate Louise Glück’s poetic use of figures from Greek mythology
Wheeler Dealers
Luke Cassidy’s novel of drug deals, heists and mess-ups along the border
Making Israel Unreal
Opinion: The faulty thinking of the boycott and divestment campaign