This year, 2026, the Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireann took place in Belfast for the first time, marking the annual festival’s 75th anniversary. This was not the first Fleadh to be held in Northern Ireland. Derry hosted it in 2013, attracting an estimated 400,000 people. It was, however, the first to take place in the Northern … Read more
We left them a gift, an offer of peace, that they took into their home. We violated all that’s sacred between people. Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s Odyssey (2026) The poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world. Percy Bysshe Shelley, ‘A Defence of Poetry’ (1821) Of all epic heroes Odysseus is … Read more
After more than forty years in print The Phoenix Magazine has entered voluntary liquidation. A surprise statistic revealed that its circulation was down to 10,000 copies per fortnight, despite being sold in newsagent and other outlets nationwide. When a print publication ceases it leaves feelings of regret and glee behind, depending on who you speak … Read more
The subtitle to A Sheepdog Named Oscar says this is a book about Love and Companionship in Rural Ireland. It goes beyond “Love and Companionship,” however, as obviously implicit to any love, and indeed companionship, is loss, its unhappy bedfellow. Love, inevitably, hurts. Peaks and troughs. Sorrow and joy. Central to the dichotomy depicted here … Read more
“With a mother, a stepmother, and six women in the same house, I refused to comply. I decided the Matriarch would not have my allegiance for cursing my father. My loyalty, undeservedly, lay with him…”
Desmond Traynor looks back on his childhood affection for Diana Rigg who played Emma Peel in the Avengers, and made him realise what kind of girl he liked.
Word came through from cousin Ed in Limerick: ‘Good news, I’ve a piano for you that’ll fit in Paul’s van.’ ‘Great stuff’ I enthused, blithely disregarding the challenge of getting it as far as my house in Sligo, let alone up the steps and through the door. Remarkably, cousin Paul agreed to make the trip … Read more
Carlo Gébler’s work spans fiction, nonfiction, memoir, history, theatre, and film. Born in Dublin in 1954 and raised in London and Ireland, he has published more than thirty books. The author of plays for stage and radio, screenplays, and documentaries, he has for many years taught creative writing in prisons, currently in HMP Hydebank and … Read more
Our world, especially the United States, is now becoming a Gangster Enterprise where brutality and soma-induced compliance maintain the ruling order. Sadly, the weapons of resistance against authoritarianism are not readily apparent. Housing rights and in some cases a right to life are threatened at all levels. We experience deep-seated inequality and a worldwide … Read more
What tangled web we weave when our intention is to deceive? Sir Walter Scott The distortion of language lies at the heart of the greatest of threats to human civilisation. It now effects all aspects of the public and civic sphere, from court rooms to journalism to the expression of corporate-political elites. It is … Read more
I will follow these gallant heroes beneath the clay The warriors my ancestors served ever since Christ’s day. From Cabhair ni Ghoirfead / I Will Not Cry for Help by Aogán Ó Rathaille. Many poets, and all mystic and occult writers, in all ages and countries, have declared that behind the visible are chains … Read more
John Dillon, Regius Professor of Greek (Emeritus) at Trinity College Dublin, is an Irish classicist and philosopher considered a world authority in ancient philosophy and Platonism. Born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1939, he returned to Ireland as a child and studied Classics at Oxford before earning a Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. He taught at Berkeley … Read more
What makes for fine rhetoric in an age of disinformation? Clearly, this is distinct from the techniques employed by corporate motivational speakers, tele-evangelists or self-help gurus. A useful starting point is to examine Aristotle’s views on Rhetoric, who argued that speech can produce persuasion (pistis) either through the character (êthos) of the speaker, the emotional … Read more
I spent a number of years in Zambia, in the early seventies, the mid-seventies and the early nineties, teaching the English language and literature in English to school students in their early and late teens. They were preparing for public examinations including GCE overseas certificate organised by Cambridge University. It was called Literature in English … Read more
I have been working in education for the last twenty-three years, and been publishing books as a writer over the last sixteen. I find disturbing the recent precipitous decline in reading and, consequent ignorance pervading contemporary culture. In response, in an effort to demonstrate its importance to my critical development, I would like to trace … Read more
Terry Fagan is a renowned Irish local historian and storyteller from Dublin’s North Inner City. Born in the 1950s and raised in the historic heart of what was once Europe’s largest red-light district, the Monto, Fagan witnessed firsthand the rapid transformation, and often erasure, of the surrounding Dublin tenements and their culture. He is, to … Read more
Bullies can take many shapes, forms, and disguises. It seems a daily occurrence that can be defined as repeated behaviours that are intentional or have malicious intent to cause fear or to instil feelings of superiority in the bully, while also causing anxiety and hopelessness in the victim, due to the bully’s relentless behaviour. Northern … Read more
Aged sixteen, I started trading sex for meth. There was no discussion about this with the drug dealers. It was understood. To me, this was a natural progression. My stepfather began to gawk at me when my first breast bud appeared, then molested me when I was twelve. Until I left home for college, I … Read more
Todo lo que vemos o nos parece, no es sino un ensueño en un ensueño! ‘Everything we see or seem to see is nothing but a dream within a dream’ – Ruben Dario My father was cremated in Dublin, but he belonged to the heat. In Ireland, he carried Nicaragua on his shoulders—low, heavy, as … Read more
Most people whose Irish childhood was spent between the mid-1950s and mid-1960s wistfully remember the comics then available. They were mostly published by the DC Thomson company based in Aberdeen, Scotland. The Beano and The Dandy were read by boys and girls, and girls’ comics like Bunty and the School Friend (this for older girls) … Read more
