November, 2016

So what’s new ? I’m in recovery mode after a literary festival in whose creation I had some initial input, which had me carousing until late in the evening for several days on the trot; rubbing shoulders with many old friends and tripping over herds of poets, writers and musicians at every turn. Old friend […]

Professor Roy Foster will be  from 6.00 PM to 8.30 PM at the University of LondonnMalet Street WC1 7HU to give the Inaugural Kehoe Lecture of the Institute of Historical Research.The lecture will be entitled   “Never so simple and clear again: Memory, Disillusionment and the Aftermath of the Irish Revolution.” The Lecture is free but […]

“Narrative” – I detest that in-vogue word, but it does describe what seems to be vital to unionism and the British government. Their story of the Trouhles is that the IRA started it, were finally beaten into submission after a horror-gallery of atrocities, and that the brave men and women who stood against them should […]

  (Written while listening to “The Parting Glass.”)   I am a child of Ireland. Who got left outside the steps Of a really bad orphanage. Where, for forty years or more I believed the lie That I was not a swan. That I would never fly And that I could never be Irish. That […]

(This blog was first published on 6 June 2016, but provides a nice companion-piece to ‘BBC – MURDERING HISTORY’) FLAMING JUNE was ushered in on the 1st of this month with a screaming headline in THE BELFAST TELEGRAPH  by Laura Abernethy – “Outrage as media commentator compares Boys Brigade to dissident republicans.” I’ve listened to BBC Radio […]

Along with two others involved in the Border Communities Against Brexit, I was  recently invited to address a meeting of members of the Fermanagh and Omagh District Council  in Enniskillen Town Hall.  Most of the councillors attended- except the DUP.  My two colleagues from BCAB, were Johnnie Kelly, a hotelier from Strabane and Dermot O’Hara […]

I heard the crudest broadcast assassination of the historical record on BBC Radio 4 recently. It was a radio play produced in its Belfast studio and set in Dublin in 1940. The Irish Defence Forces, Gardai and Civil Service were apparently honeycombed with traitors ready to collaborate with the Nazis, who were presumed to have […]

When asked about the key differences between Gordon Brown and Tony Blair, George Galloway replied that both were simply two cheeks of a Neo-liberal backside, despite an inclination to side with the left cheek. Never was there a more appropriate metaphor for the two mainstream candidates fighting the US Presidential election. The establishment parties have […]

As the US gathers itself to enter a new era – probably (and ohpleasegod) the Hillary Clinton era – Ireland looks back on the centenary year that paid homage to the leaders of the Easter Rising. We don’t know how things will develop in the US; we can reflect on what difference the commemoration of […]

People tend to forget their childhood, or at least the parts of it they’d rather not remember. The give-away line is when they enter a discussion with the words “In my young day” and  go on to draw unfavourable comparisons between  how things were when s/he was young and the way they are now. This thought jumped […]