This via Donal Kennedy “THE IRISH TIMES” AND THE 1933 GERMAN ELECTIONS Editorial, March 4th, 1933: “Herr Hitler’s Way.”
January, 2016
NAZIS , TRAIN ROBBERIES AND DEV’S BISCUIT : PART 2
“And straight I will repair To the Curragh of Kildare For it’s there I’ll find tidings of my dear.” I was thinking about that Dublin weekend with my father and uncle all those years ago , after a recent visit to my dentist to replace a filling a few days ago. Both of them are […]
McGuinness and that offer to Orangeism
Why do you suppose Martin McGuinness said he’d ‘seriously consider’ going to an Orange march if he were invited? Well, I suspect he’d say it was because a journalist asked him the question. But no politician makes a public statement without part of his/her brain considering beforehand (if they’ve good sense) what impact this will […]
TO THE MAN IN THE STREET by Donal Kennedy
“To the man in the street Who I’m sorry to say Is a keen observer of life The word ‘intellectual’ suggests straight away A man who’s untrue to his wife.” Thus the poet W.H. Auden, whose lines occur to me when I hear or read some academic directly lying, or taking facts out of context, […]
Watching Question Time last night
Nigel Dodds has an unfortunate face. Shakespeare was right when he said “There’s no art/To find the mind’s construction in the face”, but looking at Nigel one can’t help thinking that here is a man who, if you don’t mind what you say, is going start shouting stuff at you. Such […]
‘Fifty years of the Armagh Pipers’ Club’ by John Patton
No Catholic was employed above the level of junior clerk by Londonderry Corporation in 1966; no council houses in the North and Waterside wards were allocated to Catholics, regardless of their circumstances; Seamus Heaney ‘s first anthology of poems , ‘ Death of a Naturalist’ , was published by Faber; Gerry Fitt was elected as […]
DULCE ET DECORUM? by Donal Kennedy
Under “NAUGHTY” I alluded to the fact that in England the Prime Minister comes next in precedence to the Archbishop of York, who is himself less honoured than the Lord Chancellor and the Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s a fact that should give pause for thought (for those with thinking equipment) to those who contend […]
NAZIS , TRAIN ROBBERIES AND DEV’S BISCUIT : PART 1
The brain can be very selective in what it cares to store or discard from the deep pool of murky memories that make up each of our lives. I watched those kinds of dreamscapes slipping away from my father until there was nothing left but his dementia and the walls of his nursing-home room…and me […]
‘British military personnel are heroes?’ by Ross Taylor
Recently I stumbled across a reactionary headline in the Scottish Daily Mail which described the ongoing investigations into the actions of British military personnel as a ‘witch hunt’. The author of the article deliberately chose the emotive language in the headline; it is designed to present the soldiers as victims of a betrayal by the […]
Naughty by Donal Kennedy
In England, if one is having a party, it should be remembered that the Prime Minister comes next in precedence to the Archbishop of York. You’d be surprised how many of my arriviste acquaintances have made a faux pas there. And how a British historian, Charles Townshend, can be fawned on by Irish commentators after making a supercilious remark […]