October, 2016

Today (Saturday 15 October) THE TIMES carries the above headline by one its associate Editors, Ben MacIntyre. I don’t know how, when  in 1937 the  Luftwaffe’s  Condor Legion bombed that town the paper reported it, or how its critics reviewed Picasso’s masterpiece when it was first displayed at the World Fair in Paris that year. Nor do […]

OK, here are my two memories of Dylan. It’s about 1964 and I’m visiting a family in Pennyburn, in Derry. Several of the family are around my age and we’re all still reeling from the burst of creativity and pop music revolution that’s come blasting out of Liverpool, with the Beatles the most eminent. So when […]

I have always admired Bernadette McAliskey since she first appeared on TV in 1969 when she was a spokesperson for People’s Democracy, the student civil rights group. She was a student at Queens University. I admired her courage, her eloquence and the way she could articulate the issues that concerned ordinary people from a nationalist background in […]

The 400th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare has rightly been commemorated this year. He is constantly quoted by those who never saw his plays, nor read them nor heard them spoken. He introduced so many new words,  into the English language that he is credited with being one of its creators. And his ideas have captured […]

Pics 1-8 : Antrim Lens “I met two guys (Terry & Ricky) last Saturday as they were out hunting with their Harris’s Hawks and I asked if I could join them. What a fantastic morning! The Red squirrel photos were also taken last Saturday at Breen Wood at the edge of the Glens of Antrim, […]

I’m indebted to Patrick Kidd’s TIMES DIARY of 5th October, though I don’t have the full text, for pointing out a clanger dropped by Ms Goodwin, who wrote the script for a TV series on the late Queen Victoria, played by a very fanciable actress, or as today’s custom dictates “actor.” ( Ten years from […]

I listened to Nicola Sturgeon the Scots Nat leader being interviewed on BBC Radio 4 this morning. If there’s a more nimble-footed and incisive politician in these islands, I’d like to hear her. Or him. All sorts of nets were thrown her general direction by interviewer Sarah Montague. Didn’t the polls show most Scots don’t […]

“The cuckoo is a pretty bird….She wobbles as she flies…. She never hollers coo coo…. until the fourth day of July”….Clarence Ashley ,the Harry Smith Smithsonian Collection of American Folk Music. Like most people, I have my own heroes in the endeavours of literature ,art and music.They are many and varied, because my tastes are […]

On September 26 I wrote a BLOG on “THE SINN FEIN RABBI” and I promised to reply to  the comments of”Joe Bloggs”  when I had the time. He, in turn ,promised to refute what he called my “revisionist points.”   My piece opened citing Chaim Herzog’s recollection of Eamon de Valera’s visiting his father’s home in […]

Last night, I, like many thousands across the north tuned into the Nolan Live show. I have taken a particular interest in the loyalist community recently. Having grown up in a mainly nationalist/republican area I never really got the viewpoints from the “other side” and so I thought it would be good to see the […]