Apr 18, 2018 | Latest
This Penguin Modern Classic could have been made more accessible in a larger font. I struggled through it because I love Hrabal – and, of course, I was eventually rewarded. Not as funny as Closely Observed Trains, or, Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age, but...
Apr 14, 2018 | Latest
At least thirty four Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since they began holding Land Day protests on March 30th. This afternoon, at the gates of Belfast City Hall, members of a number of organisations held a rally in solidarity with the Palestinian...
Oct 25, 2017 | Latest
I was in Dublin yesterday to record a short story with the artist/composer Stano and was telling him and his friend Denise Dunphy the story of Ethel Lynch from Cork who became famous in the USSR for her novel The Gadfly. I wrote a feature about that book many years...
Sep 23, 2017 | Latest
WHILE the discourse regarding a possible reunification of Ireland (hastened because of the implications arising from Brexit) has increased in tenor, so too it appears has been a re-doubling of attempts by the establishment and media in the Twenty Six Counties to...
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...
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...
