Dublin

Domhnall Gleeson as Jim Farrell and Saoirse Ronan as Eilis in ‘Brooklyn’

Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing

24 October 2015 9:00 am

Jenny McCartney talks to unstoppable literary force Colm Tóibín about loss, priests and half-said things

Dublin: a small town wrapped in a great city

Dublin

5 September 2015 9:00 am

What a delight it is to toy with a wooden newspaper-holder rather than a smartphone, tucked away in the cosy…

Angry, funny, timely

1 August 2015 9:00 am

It’s not Paul Murray’s settings or themes — decadent aristocrats, clerical sex abuse, the financial crisis — that mark him…

Protestants preferred

21 March 2015 9:00 am

The most successful newspapers have a distinct personality of their own with which their readers connect. In Britain, the Daily…

The theatrical Constance Markewicz founded the military boy scouts, who would later staff the IRA

They had a dream

18 October 2014 9:00 am

One of the easiest mistakes to make about history is to assume that the past is like the recent past,…

English tea-chests are thrown into Boston harbour, 16 December 1773

Rags, riches and respectability

14 June 2014 8:00 am

In a grand history of the British empire — because that is what this book really is —  you might…

Dublin diversion

1 February 2014 9:00 am

On his deathbed in Dublin in the spring of 1966, Flann O’Brien must have been squiffy from tots of Paddy.…

The Spectator’s Notes

14 December 2013 9:00 am

In Dublin, where I am writing this column, people are watching the Scottish referendum campaign more closely than in London.…

Dublin’s dark heart

10 August 2013 9:00 am

It’s always a little disconcerting for the rest of us when literary novelists turn to crime. Have they become different…