July, 2017

I wrote the piece below in 2010 but don’t think I submitted it for publication. I’ve since read an old piece by the late Conor Cruise O’Brien suggesting that when William Joyce was a hanger-on of the Black and Tans  he participated In the murder Of Father Griffin in Co. Galway in 1920. An Irish […]

  Sloping slowly and sadly southwards from Portsteward where nothing happened, in a Beckettian sense, twice for the host with the most moola. For Rory Mack (for it was he!) on Thursday thru Friday of the Dubai Duty Free Irish Open Gulf-Golf Chamipionship his appearance was (gulp) Pinteresque.. Pause. Of the dramatic sort. ACT 1: […]

I’m not sure why this short film cheers me up so much. But it does. Maybe you too?   https://www.theguardian.com/world/ng-interactive/2017/jul/14/pitching-up-ancient-sports-for-children-in-irelands-most-ethnically-diverse-town

Sometimes I wonder if or when the Unionist people and their leaders will be persuaded of the benefits for them of belonging to a reunified Ireland. When you see their antics around the Twelfth every year you begin to wonder are these people capable of changing. When you look at the contents of their daily […]

If you were listening to Sunday Sequence on BBC Radio Ulster/Raidio Uladh this morning, you’ll have heard Róisín McAuley interviewing former Presbyterian Moderator Rev Norman Hamilton. It was a good interview that raised a number of worthwhile questions. The answers it produced were rather less shining. Róisín asked Norman how he felt about the various […]

  Last night I attended a pleasant event in the beautiful new Garage Theatre in Monaghan town celebrating the awarding of an EU citizens award to a group that I am pleased to be involved with –Border Communities Against Brexit (BCAB). The group were recommended for the award by Six Irish MEPs(four from Sinn Fein […]

There’s an article in this morning’s Irish Times  by Katy Hayward of Queen’s University. It’s titled ‘A frictionless Border is impossible, an invisible one undesirable’ (Yes, Virginia, the IT was always one for the snappy headline). I find myself in total disagreement with the second half of the headline and in total agreement with the first. […]

Pics 1 – 4   are by Perkin Warbeck    Pic 1 Pic 2 Pic 3   Pic 4 “Grand Old Opera House by Perkin Warbeck Il-Teatru Real / The Royal Opera House in Valletta was designed by the English architect, Edmund Middleton Barry in 1866. He got the gig as a result of his design of […]

A LONG TIME AGO, IN A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY… I was recently with my family in an Irish pub in Mallorca, on one of our annual holidays. The stout was flowing and the rebel tunes were blasting, when out of nowhere the most beautiful looking girl in the world pulled me up to dance […]

A piece in Praise of President Macron in today’s IRISH TIMES alludes to his appreciation of the philosopher Simone Weil, and suggests that Samuel Beckett (at a time when the majority of France’s elected parliamentarians collaborated with Germany) shamed Ireland’s elected non-belligerent Government by helping the French Resistance. I have yet to see in THE […]