Saving the Enlightenment
Like it or not we are stuck with the Enlightenment. That much spoken of phenomenon and reactions to it comprise the greater part of our active political and intellectual heritage. Personally, I never much cared for the term. It has a grandiose and born-again evangelical tone, which strikes me as excessively self-important and fundamentally ahistorical. […]
A Progressive Abroad
Why did the Kilkenny-born writer Francis Hackett emigrate so soon after finishing his secondary education at Clongowes in 1900? Why did he not go on to UCD? Why, despite working briefly for the leading Irish-American figure, lawyer and patron of the arts John Quinn, did he not settle into the Irish-American cultural milieu like his […]
Failing Better
Brian Friel: Beginnings, by Kelly Matthews, Four Courts Press, 216 pp, €26.95, ISBN: 978-1801511407 The decade after the death of an acclaimed dramatist generally sees a rise or fall in their fortunes, and the deciding of a reputation. Brian Friel would seem to be an exception to this rule. He died in 2015, not quite […]
Toy Story
In the course of 2023, RTÉ was plunged into an existential crisis that appeared to be largely of its own making. It seemed that one scandal after another was being revealed in the press or in sessions of Oireachtas committees. The feeble and evasive attempts by some of the station’s senior management to offer explanations […]