Apr 26, 2014 | Features
On 8th March, the weekend section of the Irish Times devoted a full broadsheet page to an astonishing photograph showing a backstreet Belfast scene from the early 1960s of a young, smiling Seamus Heaney, in an Aran sweater, surrounded by about fifteen joyous kids, at...
Mar 14, 2014 | Latest
Long an admirer of Tony Benn, the first time I actually met him was in 1984 when he came over to Belfast at the invitation of Sinn Féin and stood with myself and Gerry Adams outside Belfast’s Crumlin Road High Court to protest against the ‘supergrass’ trials...
Mar 6, 2014 | Latest
Finished a wonderful, first novel, Volga German by Colin Sloan. Ingenious, imaginative and exceptionally well-written, it is the story of Andreas Mensche, one of those ethnic Germans living in the USSR in the River Volga region since the 18th century preserving their...
Feb 17, 2014 | Features
Was on Radio Ulster’s The Nolan Show today about the campaign by some Celtic supporters to put a hunger strike song, Roll of Honour by the Irish Brigade into the BBC charts. I am not a soccer supporter – I prefer Gaelic football and rugby. In 2004 I wrote...
Feb 12, 2014 | Features
The New York Review Books Classics, which started in 1999, is a treasure trove of fiction and non-fiction and includes titles from the traditional canon but also books from across the world that fell into obscurity or that had not been translated into English. I have...
