Ireland
Has Ireland’s tourist board just killed my Airbnb?
The estate agent said that they would send someone round tomorrow and I had to calm them down. Come in…
Hell is a dog café
The dog café had a pretty pink sign describing its many services and I stood outside it mesmerised as I…
My house is devouring me (and my relationship)
The panic of another season bore down on me as the builder boyfriend painted the breakfast room with the green…
My parents have driven us to boiling point
After two weeks of us heating the house to the temperature my nearly 90-year-old father wanted it, the door to…
Why has the National got it in for Oirish peasants?
The Playboy of the Western World is like the state opening of parliament. Worth seeing once. Director Caitriona McLaughlin delivers…
Ireland wants you to forget Chaim Herzog
Now Ireland is erasing its Jewish history. This week Dublin City Council voted to change the name of Herzog Park…
Will Mahmood’s asylum reforms force Ireland’s hand?
Labour’s plans to overhaul Britain’s overstretched asylum system have forced the Irish government to do the same. As the Northern…
Why is Westminster Cathedral leaving Jesus in the dark?
Sitting beneath the looming darkness of the unfinished ceiling of Westminster Cathedral, I found myself praying. I didn’t even know…
Did our B&B guests smell a rat?
As I was showing a couple from Lincolnshire to their room, I smelt a rat. I don’t mean metaphorically, about…
Catherine Connolly’s election is a humiliation for Ireland’s establishment
‘I will be an inclusive president for all of you,’ Catherine Connolly declared as she was announced the winner of…
How Catherine Connolly could change Ireland
‘How could you possibly say the EU is good as it stands?’ the woman says. Brexit, she continues, is a…
The folly of solar panels
The house fell silent as the last of the tourists took their oat milk and pretend cheese from the guest…
The oppression of Sally Rooney
Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the…
Haircuts are a human right!
During the immigration deluge in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it seems one Afghan and one Indian national…
Britain fought on the wrong side of the first world war
It’s more than two months since I returned from Dublin, and at last the hangover is beginning to fade. I…
Will the Irish ever forgive the English?
Leaving home is the best way to find out who you are. In my case, it’s a muddle. Welsh dad.…
I’ve become a slave to my Airbnb star rating
‘Right, we’re going to book into Pauline’s B&B and give her a four-star rating and that will drop her down…
The past is another country: Ripeness, by Sarah Moss, reviewed
The voice of teenage Edith caring for her pregnant sister in Italy alternates with that of her elderly self in contemporary Ireland in a story of identity, belonging and consent
The Airbnb guest from hell
‘Is there a secret passageway behind that door?’ said the weirdly difficult Kiwi as she eyed a door marked ‘private’…
Pure gold: My Master Builder, at Wyndham’s Theatre, reviewed
My Master Builder is a new version of Ibsen’s classic with a tweaked title and a transformed storyline. Henry and…
The two young women who blazed a trail for modernism in Ireland
In 1921, the sternly abstract cubist Albert Gleizes opened the door of his Parisian apartment to two young women in…
I’m more convinced than ever that Ian Bailey was innocent
Over coffee in a seafood restaurant in the harbour, I talked with the most notorious accused man in Ireland and,…
William Blake still weaves his mystic spell
Philip Hoare considers the ageless, hypnotic appeal of the painter, poet, visionary and ‘one-man utopia’
Three’s a crowd: The City Changes its Face, by Eimear McBride, reviewed
Tension mounts between young Eily and her 40-year-old partner, Stephen, when Stephen’s daughter, Grace, appears, underlining the couple’s different ages and experiences
