Aug 13, 2010 | Features
Finished this second volume in late July. Am trying to finish all four before Christmas. [The four-box set was a Christmas present last year!] In his introduction Orhan Parmuk writes: “The Paris Review interviews were not tied to a particular book or work that the...
Aug 1, 2010 | Features
At Glasnevin in Dublin we were given a wonderful tour by the cemetery’s chief executive, George McCullough, a Belfast man. It was so moving. I had last been there in 1989 at the burial of my uncle, Harry White, in the Republican Plot. So, we visited Harry’s grave and...
Jul 15, 2010 | Features
Whether a work of art, a poem or a novel can stand on its own, be judged on its own, without reference to its provenance and its creator, is a recurrent question in criticism. Because Wagner was anti-Semitic does this inevitably taint his music? Would our judgement be...
Jul 1, 2010 | Features
After the publication of the Saville Report many letters appeared in the Irish Times, including one by a Niall Ginty, attempting to draw attention away from the British government and the Paras. A letter I wrote in response was published in that paper on 24th June....
Jun 22, 2010 | Features
Here are my notes from Sarah Bakewell’s book, mostly in her writing. Though I thought she was a bit repetitive she still brings out some interesting points and observations. Among the readers to be fascinated by Montaigne’s way of depicting the flux of his experience...
May 13, 2010 | Features
Have just finished José Saramago’s 2005 novel ‘Death At Intervals’. Initially, difficult to get into but after a struggle enjoyed the proposition/trope of the fable/satire that one day, in this small country where the novel is based, people stop dying and it has...
