Oct 25, 2017 | Latest
I was in Dublin yesterday to record a short story with the artist/composer Stano and was telling him and his friend Denise Dunphy the story of Ethel Lynch from Cork who became famous in the USSR for her novel The Gadfly. I wrote a feature about that book many years...
Sep 23, 2017 | Latest
WHILE the discourse regarding a possible reunification of Ireland (hastened because of the implications arising from Brexit) has increased in tenor, so too it appears has been a re-doubling of attempts by the establishment and media in the Twenty Six Counties to...
Aug 3, 2017 | Latest
Found two gems in the Oxfam shop in Belfast’s Ann Street, which I’ve read before, but I bought them anyway to give to friends. John Banville’s The Book of Evidence is probably his best, in my opinion, based on a real life crime in Dublin in 1982. But the other book is...
Jul 23, 2017 | Latest
George McCool was captured by German soldiers at Dunkirk. Twenty years ago, I interviewed the Derry man at his home in the Waterside. George, a Catholic unionist, who described himself as ‘a bit of a royalist’, incredibly, lived in Derry’s Creggan throughout the...
Jun 23, 2017 | Latest
Almost all of my media interviews in the past few months, including much of my commentary on Twitter, have been dominated by the Brexit issue. Again, this morning I was interviewed by Hayley Millar, BBC Scotland, about Brexit and the proposed pact between the DUP and...
Mar 1, 2017 | Latest
Finished Summer Before The Dark by Volker Weidermann and about which I have mixed views. I bought it because I am a big fan of the writer Stefan Zweig but was also influenced by the incredible number of good reviews and endorsements it received. Its premise is sound:...
