Germany and Russia have had a relationship over the centuries that has more often been businesslike than hostile. The business being conducted, however, and the deals that have been struck, have seldom much benefited the countries in between.

Gabriel García Márquez emerged explosively as a new international name in the 1960s with a novel stuffed with the baroque and the fantastic, which sought to translate the scope of America.

A new survey deals with literature and sexuality in Ireland from Joyce to McGahern, taking in the background of shrill clerical warnings of moral dangers and occasions of sin and a more humane and well-intentioned, if much mocked, strain of advice to the young and inexperienced.

We are, somewhat unsurprisingly, where we are. But how did we get there? And does our constitution have anything to do with it? It can be argued that the 1937 assemblage of principles has served us well. But who exactly has it served well? The property-owners or the people?

There have been many attempts to define the essence of humour but it seems to be a little too complex and wide-ranging to be captured by any single theory.

The architectural profession, peacock-like, has sprung to the fore in modern Ireland. But in Victorian Ireland the heroes were the engineers, and justifiably so.