Aug 3, 2017 | Latest
Found two gems in the Oxfam shop in Belfast’s Ann Street, which I’ve read before, but I bought them anyway to give to friends. John Banville’s The Book of Evidence is probably his best, in my opinion, based on a real life crime in Dublin in 1982. But the other book is...
Aug 2, 2017 | Features
Just received the clar for this August’s Féile na bhFlaitheartach 2017. The theme this year is ‘The O’Flahertys, Ireland and the Russian Revolution’. The programme has a great cover! A facsimile of the novel The Informer which was published in Moscow and Leningrad in...
Jul 23, 2017 | Latest
George McCool was captured by German soldiers at Dunkirk. Twenty years ago, I interviewed the Derry man at his home in the Waterside. George, a Catholic unionist, who described himself as ‘a bit of a royalist’, incredibly, lived in Derry’s Creggan throughout the...
Jul 16, 2017 | Features
In 2002 I interviewed David Ervine about peace, identity and compromise. It was just after a biography of Ervine, Unchartered Waters by Henry Sinnerton, had been published by Brandon (which also published Gerry Adams’ books). Ervine died ten years ago and the...
Jul 7, 2017 | Features
Just finished Nightmare in Berlin by Hans Fallada, written in 1946, a quasi-biographical novel about a writer Dr Doll and his wife, their experiences of the invading Russian authorities, and then their lives as morphine addicts attempting to survive a devastated...
