A skillful excavation of the ‘Presbyterian archive’ has produced a surprising and captivating history of Presbyterian life in eighteenth century Ulster, a veritable Bridgerton on the Bann. Drawing on a rich variety of contemporary records including letters, diaries, newspapers and…
If there was nothing inevitable about the expansion of liberty for lesbians and gay men and today nothing inevitable about the future maintenance of that liberty, what should be the strategy of the lesbian and gay rights movement?
A recent report claims that Irish school textbooks misrepresent Judaism and minimise the Holocaust. But do these charges stack up?
A woman speaks to camera about how to serve your husband. She says, ‘submission has become a dirty word’. She details her journey from ‘hardcore feminist’ to proponent of traditional femininity – softness, bread, being a helpmeet. The woman talking is my sister; I have watched this video maybe ten times. My sister is one…
Emily Nussbaum is a Pulitzer-prize-winning writer at The New Yorker magazine who has specialised in TV criticism. Her current book, Cue the Sun, recounts and analyses the invention and growth of ‘Reality’ TV, and the far-reaching implications of that development –– both on and off our TV screens. Her book’s enigmatic title comes from…
It comes from somewhere, whatever it is. Folks say it starts as a whisper on the Atlantic air: a wheeze, a rustle, a ripple, a swell coming in on the cold; then a sulphurous bouquet of fishy salt and maybe blood. In time, it rises from the sea, a churning vortex. One can, presumably, see…
Reimagining the Jews of Ireland: Historiography, Identity and Representation, Zuleika Rodgers and Natalie Wynn (eds), Peter Lang, 298 pp, €49.40, ISBN: 978-1800790834 The publication of this volume could hardly have come at a worse time for its reception by a world outraged by the ongoing genocide perpetrated by the Israeli government on innocent Palestinian civilians,…
In May 1909, Leonard Dunning, the head constable of Liverpool, wrote to the Home Office in London to warn that some very serious disturbances were looming in the city. Dunning had previously spent thirteen years in the Royal Irish Constabulary and, as he reminded Whitehall, ‘had a good deal of experience of troubles between Orangemen…
In the course of 2023, RTÉ was plunged into an existential crisis that appeared to be largely of its own making. It seemed that one scandal after another was being revealed in the press or in sessions of Oireachtas committees. The feeble and evasive attempts by some of the station’s senior management to offer explanations…
January 2nd, 2024 The rain wouldn’t let up last night, this morning really. At 3.10 am I picked up my phone to find a Substack note linked to a piece on Gaza that had a familiar construction: commonly recognised facts, followed by unnecessary adjectives, significant omissions, self-indulgent insertion of personal disgust, all tied together with…