Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Caldron Bubble
Where the line that separates our lives from chaos seems alarmingly thin
From out of the Box
Vona Groarke marshals her strengths to poems notably apt for ‘these times’
Hello to Berlin
Dropping in, not dropping out: Irish emigrants find a new destination
Hugging Stalin
Growing up under, and then losing, the certainty that socialism will win
Where To Next?
Joe Cleary explores world literature and Irish literature’s place in it
Down on the Farm
Farming, land and land hunger as a theme in modern Irish literature
Are We Civilised at All?
Fintan O’Toole’s personal narrative of Ireland’s ‘ascent to normality’
The Reunion
Leonard Cohen’s fusion of sacred and profane, of words and music
On the Brink
Breaking away from the empire: the dilemma of the 1921 Treaty negotiators
Wild Child
Early to late: questions about the conventional Jane Austen timeline
A Man of Many Parts
A brilliant historian and teacher who kept faith with the republic
The Man From Nowhere
Rallying the great and the good to build the European project from above