Reasonable Doubt

A study of Joyce’s literary use of the law by the late Adrian Hardiman stresses the writer’s ‘persistent assertion of the need for philosophical and judicial doubt as a proper, moral and humane reaction to the inadequacy of evidence’.

Compassion, Empathy, Flapdoodle

Neuroscientific speculation has escaped from the laboratory and is now the rickety foundation for scores of bestselling, populist books. The sceptical writer and journalist Steven Poole has described the phenomenon as ‘an intellectual pestilence’ and ‘neurotrash’.

The Russian Troika

The history that played out for Lenin and his commissars, who assumed dictatorial powers, was built on tactical opportunism coupled with simple good luck. One of the first acts was the setting up of the Cheka political police, with the slogan “Death to the bourgeoisie” written on its walls.

Time After Time

Not bound to swear allegiance to any master, wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor. Drop the question what tomorrow may bring, and count as profit every day that Fate allows you.

Beyond Anger

There is now a steady flow of books trying to explain what Derek Mahon, in a welcome recent return to poetry, referred to as “the age of unbeauty, rage and anger”. One of the first out of the traps was Pankaj Mishra’s The Age of Anger. Mishra is an Indian-born writer now based in London.

Those Who Remain

Julia O’Mahony is a writer, living and working in Dublin. She currently contributes literary features to Totally Dublin magazine, as well as pieces on current affairs, book releases, and cultural goings-on in the Dublin area. She is the winner of the Pete Walsh Award for Critical Writing.

Whiskey In The Jar

Keith Payne was the Ireland Chair of Poetry Bursary Award winner for 2015/2016. His collection Broken Hill (Lapwing Publications) was published in 2015. It was followed in 2016 by Six Galician Poets (Arc Publications) .

The City Spreads Out

Dublin is often eulogised for its houses’ brickwork and fanlights, for its smoky bars and pseudo-poets declaiming over stout and whiskey, but a short walk from the centre of the city are places which are more interesting and more important to making sense of Irish society

Deep Work at Dollarton

1947 saw the publication of Under the Volcano, a novel written by a prodigiously hapless alcoholic who had spent much of the previous decade occupying a squatter’s shack in the Canadian boondocks.

A Soul in Wonder

Michael Longley has said that he hopes that by the time he dies his work will look like four really long poems: “a very long love poem; a very long meditation on war and death;

In Love With Death

When ISIS declared the caliphate in 2014, initial analyses highlighted a new terrorist logic at odds with that of previous forms of jihadi terrorism.

The Virags and the Blooms

It’s often said that Ulysses “has no story”. This is true in the sense that it doesn’t have a single story which captures the essence of the work as a whole.

His Poor Materials

Sigh upon sigh till all sighed quite away. All the fond trash. Destined before being to be no more than that. Last Sighs. Of relief. Samuel Beckett, Ill Seen Ill Said

Leading from the Left

The short answer is a snap general election took place in between and it produced a result that very few expected. But there is also a longer answer that is worth exploring in some detail.

Christian Knowledge

There are many factors that made the Irish state that came into being in 1922 different from other nation states, not least that it was born out of colonial conflict, that its coloniser dominated the world capitalist system, that its coloniser was just across the Irish sea and that six northern counties had refused to join the new state.

The German Friend