Dublin
Will the Irish ever forgive the English?
Leaving home is the best way to find out who you are. In my case, it’s a muddle. Welsh dad.…
A painful homecoming: The Visitor, by Maeve Brennan, reviewed
Returning to the family house in Dublin after the death of her mother in Paris, 22-year-old Anastasia expects a warm welcome – only to be steadily spurned by her embittered grandmother
How working-class Dublin turned on Conor McGregor
When Conor McGregor stood in the dock for his civil rape trial last week, the controversial MMA fighter was receiving…
A wish-fulfilment romance: Intermezzo, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
Rooney’s fourth novel is another case of compare and contrast, with various pairings of anxious characters struggling through their twenties and thirties in picturesque Dublin
Sir Roger Casement never deserved to hang
Executed as one of the leaders of the Easter Rising, he was absent from Dublin at the time of the doomed insurrection – and actually tried to prevent it
She’s leaving home: Breakdown, by Cathy Sweeney, reviewed
One ordinary November day in Dublin, without forethought or planning, a woman walks out on her husband and two teenage children and never comes back
A lurid fascination
After months of conversations with Ireland’s most notorious murderer, Mark O’Connell got both more and less than he bargained for, says Frances Wilson
What have we been missing?
Ge’s short stories set in China are her most adventurous, ranging from politics in the time of Confucius to sex in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake
Actor’s notebook
I’m on the road, a very proper place for an actor to be. Never mind all those jokes about some…
All roads lead to Dublin
I do not think I am alone in confessing that I had read critical works on James Joyce before I…
One day in Dublin
Emilie Pine writes about the big things and the little things: friendship, love, fertility, grief; waking, showering, catching the bus.…
Life, love and alienation
The millennial generation of Irish novelists lays great store by loving relationships. One of the encomia on the cover of…
Language explodes
‘How good you are in explosition!’ The first ever unabridged recording of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake is a monumental achievement…
Dublin pub crawl
Far be it from me to utter a word against the patron saint of Dublin pubs, Roddy Doyle. Granted he’s…
Acting the part
Actress is the novel Anne Enright has been rehearsing since her first collection of stories, The Portable Virgin (1991). It…
Shadows of the past are ominously present in a trio of memorable first novels
The Shangri-Las’ song ‘Past, Present and Future’ divides a life into three, Beethoven-underpinned phases: before, during and after. Each section…
A choice of first novels
Remember Douglas Coupland? Remember Tama Janowitz? Remember Lisa St Aubin de Terán? Banana Yoshimoto? Françoise Sagan? The voice of your…
Those fearless men, but few
While reading this book in a London café, I was politely buttonholed by an Irishman: ‘Sorry to disturb you, but…
Nuclear waste
Miss Atomic Bomb celebrates the sub-culture that grew up around nuclear tests in 1950s America. The citizens of Nevada would…
Rebel angels
The reverence for those involved in the Easter Rising is evident in an exhibition devoted to its centenary, says Harry Mount
Doomed youth
It’s often said that there are only seven basic plots in literature. When it comes to biographies of rock stars…
From Celtic tiger to pussycat
A gentle spirit has survived Ireland’s many changes
The view from my Belfast bus: tribalism as the enemy of prosperity
At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and…
Guinness and oysters — or beef and Haut-Brion — in deepest Ireland
We were talking about the West of Ireland and agreed that there were few greater gastronomic pleasures than a slowly…
Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing
Jenny McCartney talks to unstoppable literary force Colm Tóibín about loss, priests and half-said things
