Articles
Essays, reviews, and commentary on literature, history, politics, and ideas.
Are we there yet?
Arthur Balfour’s remark on the Irish Free State, ‘What was the Ireland the Free State took over? It was the Ireland we made’; a verdict that contained more than a grain of truth. But it was not the whole story.
Illicit Love
A new study explores the lives of queer men in Dublin between the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the dawn of gay liberation in the early 1970s.
Slouching towards Bethlehem
France in the 1930s was not, as some historians once claimed, immune to fascism. But the movements that did exist, based on the Italian rather than the German model, were both disunited and meagrely supported.
Self-Unbecoming
Palpable from Rob Doyle’s debut on has been an empathy unconstrained by moralising or any craving for peer approval. He gives us is, not ought.
The Rise of Miserablism
Another look at the rise and fall of modern Britain from the postwar ‘golden age’ to the decay that set in following the ‘winter of discontent’ of the late 1970s.
Proustian Thoughts from Ireland
A new collection of essays shows that the author of À la recherche du temps perdu had a major impact on Irish life, deeper and more extensive than commonly thought.
Reinventing the Renaissance
This high-spirited and highly personal approach to writing about the Renaissance is anything but ‘academic’.
Is Hope a Virtue?
Is it time we entertained doubts about hope’s persistent allure?
Messy versus Tidy
The shadow of Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith hangs over two contemporary efforts to explain what makes nations wealthy and what makes empires decline.
Having a Reputation
A new biography of James Bryce, one time Chief Secretary of Ireland and supporter of Irish Home Rule, reveals the astonishingly varied and accomplished life of a long forgotten ‘greatest living Englishman’. This is an outstanding work of intellectual history,…
A Cosmopolitan Poet
Katrina Goldstone pays tribute to her much missed friend and mentor, the poet and scholar Gerald Dawe (1952-2024). By reflecting on his distinctive cosmopolitan sensibility, what his wife, Dorothea Melvin, dubbed ‘his European soul’, we get a surer grasp of…
Palestinians and Other Strangers
Two new studies of the plight of Palestinians and other strangers offer a glimpse of how we might hold on to solidarity as strategy and human principle. Dolefully or otherwise, writes Lori Allen, we have all been looking through our…