Jul 17, 2014 | Features
Earlier this year I was asked by my German translator, Jörg Rademacher, if I would write the introduction to his translation and annotation of the original version of The Picture of Dorian Gray, the version used in court to ridicule and indict him by Edward Carson....
Jul 17, 2014 | Latest
Finished a wonderful novel by Armagh-born but England-based writer John McMillan, The Soul of the City. It is a Bildungsroman, set in Belfast and London and is evocative of the 1960s and early 1970s so fine, lyrical and powerful are the detailed observations of mores,...
Jun 9, 2014 | Latest
Finished A Girl Is A Half-formed Thing by Eimear McBride, her debut novel, written about ten years ago but which only went into print last year after many rejection slips. She took quite a risk in the style of writing but this stream of consciousness narrative about...
May 27, 2014 | Features
Received in the post today a copy of those of us in class 5A, Glen Road CBS, 1968-1969, forty-five years ago, as the twenty-eight of us prepared to sit our ‘O’ Levels in June 1969. Those of us who passed and who wanted to do ‘A’ Levels had to cross the road and go to...
May 14, 2014 | Features
Ten years ago, in 2004, I wrote two features about the conduct of the British army in Iraq. One was ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ – comparing the British army killing of Danny McCooey in Belfast in 1977 with the British army killing of Baha Mousa in...
