The Harvest In
Seamus Heaney’s conception of poetry meant he had to trust that his disciplined tending of the ground would lead to harvest, that if the writing self was kept open the poems would come through.
Guilty Truant
A biography of the celebrated writer and director Jonathan Miller finds a man who has never forgiven himself for abandoning his first career in medicine.
The Sexual Caterwaul
It is difficult, in a permissive society, to define what is obscene. But to find at least something obscene shows that you are a sentient person.
Interrupted Lives
Fate dealt harshly with both JG Farrell and Stewart Parker, two hugely gifted Irish writers who died in their forties
Oscar Wilde and the Irish
Far from being a marginal figure in independent Ireland, Wilde was viewed with considerable interest and good will.
Weimar Stories
The German-Dutch writer Hans Keilson reached a new English-speaking audience when his novels from the 1930s were reissued. This rediscovery came when Keilson was 100.