February, 2021

God rest the noble Irish soul of Hugh Lunney. Hugh was from Swad (Swanlinbar)—the part of the parish of Kinawley, Fermanagh, that is in County Cavan. So, Hugh and I had this in common: not only was our country divided by England’s undemocratic Border, so too was our historic parish, which has had an ecclesial presence since the Sixth Century. The last […]

This blog first appeared as a column in The Andersonstown News Is the President of Ireland, Michael D Higgins, an imposing figure? Well, if by ‘imposing’ you mean ‘tall’, he obviously isn’t. Most past presidents would have towered above him, even perhaps the two Marys. But Irish people don’t elect presidents on the basis of their height. Michael D had two hard acts to follow […]

“All you need to know about this poem is that it is a true story. It happened in the ’70s, and it took me years to find a way to write the poem.” ‘They flash upon that inward eyewhich is the bliss of solitude’(from ‘The Daffodils’ by William Wordsworth) An afternoon yellow and open-mouthedwith daffodils. […]

Introduction The Irish Confederate Wars began in 1641 when the Catholic aristocracy staged an unsuccessful coup against English Protestant rule there.  In The Bloody Bridge, published in 1903, Thomas Fitzpatrick described the insurrection as an episode ‘about which men wrote, as desperately as they fought’.[1]  The sentiment is utterly apt.  Allegations of atrocities committed by […]

 Viewing scenic places on TV in recent years has had one drawback: your tour guide is inevitably some celeb, demanding as much attention as the scenery they’re talking about. Billy Connolly, Michael Portillo, Michael Palin  – the list goes on.  In ADRIAN DUNBAR’S COASTAL IRELAND (CHANNEL 4), the Fermanagh boy is front and centre. Last […]

The Nolan Show is one of BBC Northern Ireland flagship presentations. It has been at the centre of many controversies over several years with its presenter Stephen Nolan being accused by many of fomenting sectarianism through his style of presentation and the platform used by the programme to engage with the public. A recent Change.org […]

Now that the report on the Bobby Storey funeral has come out, and shows that Sinn Féin at no point exerted pressure on the Roselawn people to have special treatment, that’s the end of that, right? Uh-uh. We comment on unionist response And in this day of take-aways and home deliveries, what about the priest […]

I can’t recall ever reading the Economist. Economics was described by that most dismal and dour Scots philosopher, Thomas Carlyle, as  “the dismal science”. I’m not (God Forbid!) a disciple of Carlyle but, I’m an agnostic in economic matters. The magazine was founded in the 1843 to campaign for the Repeal of the Corn Laws. […]

There’s talk of a tunnel to unite “the Four Nations of the United Kingdom.” It seems “Northern Ireland” is to be deemed a Nation. The English Language, for all its virtues, can be very confusing. You may have heard the story of the German student of the language  in London passing a theatre staging Hamlet, […]