An A.B.C. of Irish Modernism: Apocalypse, Boredom, Crack
In a powerful 1997 essay, Seamus Deane suggested that the twin forces that beset modern…
Browsing: History and Economics
John Gray: the UK’s Leading Public Intellectual
Like errant flames from the dying embers of a once great fire, there is much…
In Conversation with David Langwallner
London-based Barrister David Langwallner, the founder of the Innocence Project in Ireland, responds to the…
Public Intellectual Series: Slavoj Žižek
No picture of the modern world is complete without a Marxist analysis. The fundamental point…
Plagues of Prejudice
In December 1899 Honolulu-based physicians attributed two deaths to bubonic plague, and a local paper…
The Bestseller that never existed
I first heard the story of Gene Shepherd after receiving a 46th rejection slip for…
The Public Intellectual Series: Christopher Hitchens
Hardly a week goes by without someone asking me about my connection to Christopher Hitchens.…
The Public Intellectual Series: Noam Chomsky
They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness. John Milton,…
Public Intellectual Series: Michel Foucault
I wrote what follows prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, and have been prompted to re-read…
Jeremy Corbyn, Percy Shelley and Ireland
The Irish media generally looks askance at Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘radical socialist manifesto.’[i] An historically warm…
‘Economic theory changes one funeral at a time’ – An Interview with Warren Mosler on the True Nature of Money
It’s the grease that makes the economic wheels turn. But ask where your taxes go…
Public Intellectual Series: George Orwell – A Crucial Man for Our Time
George Orwell has never been unfashionable, and is in vogue now more than ever. His…
Public Intellectuals: Jürgen Habermas
It came as a surprise when the editor of Cassandra Voices divulged recently that he…
Reclaiming from Conservatism Perhaps the Greatest Irish Intellectual Edmund Burke
A past competition, now sadly in abeyance, used to involve arguing over who was the…
Roger Casement’s Example Inspires me to Protect the Amazon and its People
Over the course of 2019 there has been a sharp increase in deforestation in the…
Albert Camus and the Decline of the Public Intellectual
But again, and again there comes a time in history when the man who dares…
Gluttony, Gastronomy, and the Origins of ‘French’ Food
As French President, François Mitterrand enjoyed his fair share of sumptuous feasts in the haute…
My Grandmother’s Life Under the Third Reich and Behind the Iron Curtain
Irene H. Going into your house, I sat in the conservatory waiting for the door…
Confronting ‘the Russia in Ourselves’
The Russian bear looms in the English-speaking imagination as savage and barbaric, but with a…
Mary Beatrice Midgley – An Appreciation
Mary Beatrice Midgley was a giant among philosophers, though she only published the first of her…