A Light and Heartless Hand

Getting Away

A Smiling Public Man

Murder Most Foul

The achievement of a great entertainer, ‘queen of crime’ Agatha Christie

What Larks

Bridget Rose Dugdale, an English debutante on Irish active service

A Tonic for Our Times

Margaret Atwood’s astute, sparkling takes on social and literary matters

The Night Walker

As the lamps come on, thoughts of a connoisseur of the crepuscular

Coasting

A Reader from ‘Archipelago’, a review celebrating wild Britain and Ireland

The Story from Below

The Irish working class’s long search for its voice to be heard in literature

Once Upon A Time

Marina Warner’s reimagining of a near magical transformation

Lowly Things, Homely Folk

From the four-poster to the settle bed, the dresser set with delph to the chair made from tree stumps, Irish country houses were filled with…

A Mission to Unite

Deeply Catholic, though also feminist and liberal, President Mary McAleese built bridges between the denominations. Her commitment was impressive and her story is an inspiring…

The Seamus Heaney Experience

On a jaunt to Ayrshire, Seamus Heaney came upon the Robert Burns Visitor Experience. When friends joked that there might soon be a Heaney Experience…

Silver Linings

Michele Roberts, the acclaimed author of twenty-five books, was rather put out when her new novel was rejected. For a year, she wrote a diary…

Not So Equal

They lived in squares, painted in circles and loved in triangles

Standing Up for Justice

Mary Ann McCracken, sister of the executed 1798 leader Henry Joy, was an advanced thinker, a dedicated philanthropist and a model of composure, dignity and…

Beating the odds

Edna O’Brien has been accused by some less perceptive critics of always writing about victims. But as she has insisted, and as is abundantly clear…

Catching Up

For decades, Northern Ireland politics meant little more than the struggle between Protestants and Catholics, unionists and nationalists. Since the guns have gone silent it…

On the Side of the Angels

Polly Devlin was raised in rural Tyrone, on the shores of Lough Neagh. But at twenty she was wafted into British high society by way…

Buried Treasures

Belfast’s Balmoral Cemetery was once a gloriously dishevelled and spooky playground favoured by the more adventurous among neighbourhood children. But after many complaints it was…

Freezing and Melting

More women than you might think have seen fit over the centuries to wander out, in good thick skirts or other climate-appropriate attire in the…

A Girl, Undaunted

A body in the coal hole of the Carlton Club; a strangulation with a Hermes scarf: Kate Atkinson has written a sophisticated and witty espionage…

Where The Wild Things Live

Many books for the young, whether about animals and their habitats or children on a ‘wilderness’ adventure, contain a message which an attentive child may…

Puttin’ On the Ritz

Zadie Smith is an opponent of dullness, mediocrity, pusillanimity and taking yourself too seriously; she is a champion, and in her work an embodiment, of…

A Life Composed

Celebrated biographer Claire Tomalin tackles the subject of her own life with detachment and calm. Her concise and slightly formal prose strikes the right note…

Making Waves

A novel set on Rathlin Island at the end of the nineteenth century takes as its subject the arrival of Marconi’s men to conduct an…