Latest Blogs
In Kafka’s Deathhouse
Franz Kafka died in an Austrian sanatorium from an incurable illness, aged forty, in 1924. Nothing could be done for him. There were some far more questionable deaths just up the road from there almost twenty years later.
It’s No Go The Poetry Show
One of Ireland’s greatest poets died fifty years ago today. So let’s make a bit of space for that too.
Letter from Gulladuff
South Derry farming folk, sending their children away to board in Derry city, were assured that at least they’d get a good dinner. They didn’t.
The Harvest is in
Barra O Seaghdha considers just how easy it might have been at several steps along his ascending career path for Seamus Heaney to turn away from the past.
Sweet sounds together
Let us not forget Seamus Heaney’s wonderful gifts as a prose writer.
Rita Thalmann 1926-2013
Rita Thalmann, an historian born in Nuremberg who taught and published in France, was one of the last historians of Nazism to have personal experience of it in the disasters it brought on her family.
I’m a plain man. Well, a bigot actually
Yorkshire folk have a strong reputation for telling it like it is, which leaves them free to tell it like it isn’t.
The Other Side of the Story
It is perhaps the greatest of understatements to say that Ulster loyalism gets a bad press. But some people are working to help foster an articulacy in the community that might end up being beneficial to everyone.
Elmore Leonard 1925-2013
Elmore Leonard, master of slick plots and sharp dialogue, has died aged eighty-seven. Here are his ten rules for writing.
Don’t Make A Fuss
In August 1947 George Orwell nearly drowned himself, his infant son and his niece and nephew; and noticed some interesting activity by cormorants and puffins.
Mariners’ Prayers
We may have left certain practices of our childhood and youth behind, but they haven’t gone away, you know.
Lady Don’t Fall Backwards
We all know what is happening, but what will happen in the end? Keep turning those pages.