If we were to pledge not to buy another book until we’d read every last one we have on our shelves at home, booksellers and publishers would soon go out of business. They should not worry, however, for our desire to buy and to collect seems to be unquenchable. As Italo Calvino observed, behind the doors of the bookshop a formidable array of volumes is always waiting to ambush you.

Those who partake in ‘decommemorating’, in the form of pulling down statues or otherwise, frequently see themselves as agents of oblivion, determined to efface an undesirable memory. But in the very act of calling attention to an offensive monument, they are in effect agents of memory, unwittingly reviving remembrance of the memorial they seek to supplant.

This article is adapted from the introduction to Reclaiming the European Street: Speeches on Europe and the European Union, 2016-2020, by Michael D Higgins,...

And when he was come into his own country, he taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said, Whence hath...

Reading an issue of the drb is like splashing happily in a pool of ideas. Maurice Earls’s dash across several centuries of Irish history,...

  Enda O’Doherty writes: The printer Robert Estienne (1460 or 1470-1520), whose shop was on the rue de l’école de Droit in Paris, was a...

Luke Gibbons writes: When the organisers of “After Orientalism”, a major conference on the work of Edward Said, asked the great Palestinian writer and...

Enda O’Doherty writes: Many of us may be aware of the rather disparaging remark Shakespeare’s friend and rival Ben Jonson – a highly educated...

Slowly but surely – and barring sudden reverses in the progress we have made – Ireland will be returning to social and cultural life...

During lockdown a range of our habits has been broken, and in some cases resuming them doesn’t seem something to look forward to. For many, contemplation of resuming even the simplest and most harmless of habits spurs the thought: I’m not really sure I want to do that any more.

The terms ‘victim’ and ‘perpetrator’ are not mutually exclusive, in the present or in the past. History matters and cannot be ignored. But in trying to shape a peaceful future for Ireland we should be aware of the danger of too much history, in particular a one-sided obsession with past wrongs.

Ahead of Ireland’s referendum on the subject of extending marriage rights to same-sex couples, Una Mullally charts the development of the movement, one of the most rapid and transformative changes in Irish society over the last century, from its origins to the present day.

Almost 58 million Brazilians voted for President Jair Bolsonaro, a man who never hid his nastiness, illiberalism, backwardness and general political ignorance. There are many ways of studying ‘bolsonarismo’, but one of the simplest is just to let him and his cronies speak.

A hundred years ago this month Yeats published ‘The Second Coming’ in an American magazine. The poem, Joe Cleary argues, did not wait to reflect calmly on rupture and crisis but swallowed them hot. Art does not brood on historical events but aspires itself to be the event. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.

Donald Trump’s exit is gratifying. The United States will now have a president who is decent, civil and honest. However, in a political society which has never been more divided and in which citizens have this year bought 17 million guns, uniting the people will not be easy.

I have met people, including some of my friends and their teenage children, who were proud to say, after the terrorist attacks, that they were definitely ‘not Charlie’. Many indeed felt that the cartoons led to Islamophobia and were an elitist insult to an oppressed and powerless minority.

An American academic finds the people he meets abroad more interesting and more widely knowledgeable than his colleagues and peers at home.

Enough is as good as a feast. But a feast is as good as enough.

The English naturalist Gilbert White writes of the harsh January weather of 1776.

New material that sheds light on the last days of Roger Casement has been released by the National Library on open digital format.

Seamus Heaney pays tribute to a man beloved by his friends for his originality as a poet, his acuity as a critic, his probity and courage and merriment.

George Orwell taught us how to detect cant and doublespeak. He also had some views on language that would do credit to a retired colonel in Tunbridge Wells.

Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was published two hundred years ago today. Miss Austen couldn’t wait to try it out on the neighbours.

Two historians clash in a Belfast radio interview on the Famine. Did the British deliberately plan for genocide by 'allowing nature to run its course'?

A little bit of Under Milk Wood for St David's Day. Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard rehearses her two late husbands.