Ireland
A friendship in flux: Normal People, by Sally Rooney, reviewed
‘Marianne had the sense that her real life was happening somewhere very far away, happening without her, and she didn’t…
Brian Friel’s Aristocrats should be called ‘Posh People Move House’
Non-stop chatterbox and mystifyingly revered fabricator of sub-Chekovian paddywhackery, Brian Friel has received another production at the Donmar. His play…
Did Ed Balls mean to make a documentary on the joys of Trump’s America?
The thing I most regret having failed ever to ask brave, haunted, wise Sean O’Callaghan when I last saw him…
Why has the National given over its largest stage to one of the nation’s smallest talents?
The National has made its largest stage available to one of the nation’s smallest talents. If Brian Friel had been…
It’s not for Westminster to decide Northern Ireland’s abortion law
Predictably enough, there have been no calls this week for the Irish referendum on abortion to be re-run, no complaint…
Pope Francis raises the white flag
Just before Ireland voted overwhelmingly to end the country’s constitutional ban on abortion, Catholics in the fishing village of Clogherhead…
The Irish border is the EU’s problem, not ours
In deference to public exhaustion, I’ve largely avoided Brexit in this slot. But a columnist’s output ought rightly to echo…
The Good Friday Agreement is not a peace but a truce
The Good Friday Agreement (GFA), which celebrates its 20th anniversary this week, is not a peace, but a truce. This does…
It is the Europhiles who are the head-bangers now
For almost as long as I can remember, Eurosceptic Tory MPs have been defined by the media as ‘head-bangers’. As…
The DUP is quite likely to cave in over ‘regulatory alignment’. Here’s why they should not
I’m afraid I have a deep faith in the Democratic Unionist Party’s capacity to cede an issue of principle in…
David Trimble: The Irish government is dragging Brexit into dangerous territory
When I negotiated the Good Friday Agreement nearly 20 years ago, no one foresaw a day when the -United Kingdom…
How to be good
Suffering, wrote Auden, takes place ‘while someone else is eating or opening a window or just walking dully along’. His…
Looking back, losing bits
As Roddy Doyle’s 12th novel begins, Victor Forde, a washed-up writer, has returned to the part of Dublin where he…
Fudging Ireland’s border issue can only mean Troubles ahead
The question of what kind of border after Brexit will exist between Northern Ireland and the Republic will, I predict,…
Churchill’s return
From ‘Colonel Winston Churchill’, The Spectator, 13 May 1916: The return of Colonel Churchill to the House of Commons, which we are…
The power of song
You might not think that the Eurovision Song Contest (screened live from Stockholm tonight) could have any connection with how…
What to do in Ireland
From ‘Reconstruction’, The Spectator, 5 May 1916: What Ireland wants just now is firm and judicious military government. The rebellion of last…
Rebel angels
The reverence for those involved in the Easter Rising is evident in an exhibition devoted to its centenary, says Harry Mount
From Celtic tiger to pussycat
A gentle spirit has survived Ireland’s many changes
The view from my Belfast bus: tribalism as the enemy of prosperity
At Stormont on Saturday, we observed a minute’s silence for the dead of Paris. Our conference group of Brits and…
Guinness and oysters — or beef and Haut-Brion — in deepest Ireland
We were talking about the West of Ireland and agreed that there were few greater gastronomic pleasures than a slowly…
I may have to revise my view that crypto-currencies are Satan’s work
I confess to being an out-and-out Luddite when it comes to bitcoin and other so-called crypto-currencies. To the extent that…
Colm Tóibín on priests, loss and the half-said thing
Jenny McCartney talks to unstoppable literary force Colm Tóibín about loss, priests and half-said things
Europe’s ever-looser union
Europhiles have warned us for years of the dangers of Britain leaving the EU. But all the while a different…
A karaoke version of Kafka
The Blue Guitar is John Banville’s 16th novel. Our narrator-protagonist is a painter called Oliver Orme. We are in Ireland,…
