Forgiving/Forgetting

Brian Rowan did a short interview with me across the phone for a story published in yesterday’s Belfast Telegraph. It is a good analytical piece on “Why we have to forgive before we start to forget.” Here it is in full: Saville represents a milestone in dealing with...

The Art of War

My interview with Julian Putkowski on Sun Tzu’s ‘Art of War’ was broadcast on the World Service of the BBC last Wednesday and is available here until next Wednesday. From the BBC website: “It was written by the military scholar Sun Tzu about 2,500 years ago and still...

Asking For Trouble

Finished Patricia Craig’s memoir, ‘Asking For Trouble’, the story of her dismissal from St Dominic’s Grammar School in 1959 over her alleged scandalous behaviour with lads in the Donegal gaeltacht, and the repercussions that had on the rest of her life. Patricia, who...

Death At Intervals

Have just finished José Saramago’s 2005 novel ‘Death At Intervals’. Initially, difficult to get into but after a struggle enjoyed the proposition/trope of the fable/satire that one day, in this small country where the novel is based, people stop dying and it has...

Little Man, What Now?

I stayed up, rather than read in bed, and about twenty past midnight I finished the last sixty pages of ‘Little Man, What Now?’ by Hans Fallada. My eyes were sore but it doesn’t matter as I no longer enjoy a full night’s sleep because of severe arthritis in my feet...