Javier Marías, who died on Sunday in Madrid from pneumonia, contracted after a bout of Covid, was probably the Spanish writer best-known outside his native country. His work ‑ sixteen novels as well as many volumes of short stories and essays – was translated into more than forty languages. In English translation he may…

Maurice Earls writes: Following the Treaty of Limerick, Ireland’s capacity to put an army on the field capable of defeating the English ended. For some time, there was hope that Catholic Europe would provide such an army. That turned out to be a vain hope. Irish political culture has been shaped ever since by this…

Marie Sherlock writes: Looking from the outside in, Ireland is a paradox of plenty. Despite the havoc wreaked by the pandemic, our economy expanded last year by almost 13.5%. Our national income grew just below that figure, and that was still a huge rise of €32.8 bn in just twelve months. Despite the enormous and…

Maurice Earls writes: In response to the invasion of Ukraine and more particularly in response to the European reaction to that invasion, people in Ireland are, after a long silence, again talking about the state’s policy of neutrality and asking if it should be changed. Some believe it should be changed. From this quarter, there…

John Fleming writes: A sturdy melodic voice emanates from a man whose face and twisted body communicate some existential torture. Precise narrative lyrics work with enticing pop and charm, and then the voice explodes like a nail bomb. The singer projects bemused unease. A history of sneer and insight. Rich layers of observation piled on top…

  Maurice Earls writes: A story entitled “Three Glimpses of Life”, written by Patrick Kavanagh in preparation for his landmark novel Tarry Flynn, is a good place to start for anyone wanting to understand the culture that took root over much of Ireland in the century following the Famine. The story, set in the 1930s,…

Enda O’Doherty writes: Back in the 1990s I went on a short “study trip” to Germany as part of a small group of journalists, drawn chiefly from the newly democratised countries of central and eastern Europe. There were Poles, Lithuanians, Romanians, Czechs, Slovaks, Bulgarians, a Hungarian, a Georgian and – to make up the numbers…

Tom Hennigan writes: After the swift unravelling of the Soviet Union, its strategic thinkers scrambled to justify Russia’s demand for continuing influence in lands suddenly beyond its control. One of the earliest terms coined for their emerging policy was the Monroeski Doctrine, which enters the historical record in August 1992, just seven months after Moscow…

  Dave Duggan writes: In 1990, Routledge published The Death of the Irish Language by Reg Hindley. I was writing radio drama in English and in Irish at the time, but my day-job was in a bookshop. Dealing with publishers’ representatives, “reps”, was one of my roles, including for books in and concerning Irish. The…

  Enda O’Doherty writes: With the publication yesterday (March 7th) by France’s constitutional council of the list of approved candidates, the campaign for the presidential election, to be held over two rounds on April 10th and 24th, may be said to have been officially launched. The candidates and their affiliations are as follows: Emmanuel Macron…