Issue 161, Summer 2026
Edna Longley on Seamus Heaney’s Collected Poems; Kevin Power on the Dunblane massacre; Luke Gibbons on the world of John McGahern; a new poem by James Harpur; Yvonne Galligan on Charlie Haughey and Garret Fitzgerald; Paul Seabright on wealth and empires; Gearóid Ó Tuathaigh on the genesis of Irish modernity; Carla King on politics and dirty hands; Julian Padraic Young on the alleged virtue of hope; Enda O’Doherty on the far-right in France; Patricia Thane on the rise of miserablism in Britain; Charlie Lynch on illicit love in modern Ireland; Ruth Harris revisits her award-winning study of Alfred Dreyfus in our Rereadings series; Eamon Maher on Proustian Thoughts from Ireland; David O’Connor on Rob Doyle’s latest novel; and Brian S Campbell on Reinventing the Renaissance.
In This Issue
When More is Less
This colossal volume of Heaney’s poems ‘almost disguises the fact that he is a poet by entombing his lyric in a mass of annotation, exegesis and “uncollected” poems’.
Messy versus Tidy
The shadow of Edward Gibbon and Adam Smith hangs over two contemporary efforts to explain what makes nations wealthy and what makes empires decline.
John McGahern’s World
The deliberate blurring of inside and outside is central to McGahern’s vision, the writer at once being absorbed in his surroundings and yet stepping back to articulate what goes without saying on the daily round.
Massacre in Dunblane
He never married, had no children, lived alone. He had few friends, and kept none for long. He ran a small DIY shop and was a keen photographer. He was also interested in guns.
Are we there yet?
Arthur Balfour’s remark on the Irish Free State, ‘What was the Ireland the Free State took over? It was the Ireland we made’; a verdict that contained more than a grain of truth. But it was not the whole story.
Rereadings 2: Dreyfus Returns
Ruth Harris reflects on her prize-winning study of the notorious Dreyfus case, 'The Man on Devil’s Island', and discovers new, fascinating parallels with our times.
The Odd Couple
A new study of the intense rivalry between Charlie Haughey and Garret FitzGerald suggests it may have ended up being a force for good for the country as a whole.
Getting One’s Hands Dirty
Must politics be kept separate from morals or can they be reconciled?
Illicit Love
A new study explores the lives of queer men in Dublin between the creation of the Irish Free State in 1922 and the dawn of gay liberation in the early 1970s.
Slouching towards Bethlehem
France in the 1930s was not, as some historians once claimed, immune to fascism. But the movements that did exist, based on the Italian rather than the German model, were both disunited and meagrely supported.
Self-Unbecoming
Palpable from Rob Doyle’s debut on has been an empathy unconstrained by moralising or any craving for peer approval. He gives us is, not ought.
The Rise of Miserablism
Another look at the rise and fall of modern Britain from the postwar ‘golden age’ to the decay that set in following the ‘winter of discontent’ of the late 1970s.
Proustian Thoughts from Ireland
A new collection of essays shows that the author of À la recherche du temps perdu had a major impact on Irish life, deeper and more extensive than commonly thought.
Reinventing the Renaissance
This high-spirited and highly personal approach to writing about the Renaissance is anything but ‘academic’.