Author Jude Collins

Time, I found, got jumbled. Was it yesterday or two days ago that I saw Joe, with tears literally running down his cheeks, speaking of a military base or something being named after his dead son Beau? And it was almost definitely the same occasion where Joe told how people were saying he always quotes […]

On 12 August this year it will be exactly 200 years since King George IV set his two feet in Ireland. It was his 59th birthday. No great feat you may think. But he was the first claimant to the thrones of England, Scotland and Ireland, or the throne of the United Kingdom to visit […]

This review first appeared in The Andersonstown News Ian Paisley Jr got one of the opening remarks in MARTIN McGUINNESS (TG4) “When people say to me ‘Why did you make those arrangements with the former terrorist Martin McGuinness?’  I say ‘The word ‘former’”. This was a detailed 90-minute look at the former Deputy First Minister, from a personal and a political perspective. […]

As the Covid 19 pandemic literally works its way through our society we have many people, governments and institutions, pressing for full vaccination. From the podium, in London, Dublin and Belfast, we hear the mantra, stay at home, follow the guidelines, socially distance and wait for the vaccine. I agree with this. While I have […]

As we all struggle through mid-January, Pat and I put our heads together and consider the damage done by Trump and the damage that must be undone by Biden. Has Trump really gone away? Will the Republican party be able to reform itself? Then there is the question of examinations that won’t happen – Leaving […]

The Irish National Caucus is deeply sorry about the death of Norman Houston, former Director of the NI Bureau  in Washington, DC.  Norman was a good and dedicated diplomat and public servant. I guess the most important thing we say about others is not what we say on their death, but what we say to them while they are living. […]

Today is Martin Luther King day.  It was established in 1986 and was seen as a breakthrough of sorts: that US citizens of all colours, especially white, would publicly acknowledge the importance of this man who, let’s not forget, was killed for being what he was. The online newspaper The Canary  has a piece on […]

His “BROOKLYN” is a good example. And he impressed me when he was interviewed on the BBC’s “Desert  Island Discs.” But fiction dressed as journalism does not become him. The SUNDAY TIMES (January 17) gives him almost a full broadsheet page, and, I imagine, a decent sum of money, to vent his spleen on the Catholic Church […]

As I write this (on Saturday January 16) BBC 2 is screening THE NUN’S STORY, starring Audrey Hepburn, made in 1959. I remember seeing queues of women in O’Connell Street waiting to watch it in the Metropole. It was set in the Belgian Congo, where over 50 years earlier Roger Casement had travelled and reported […]