Cost of Living: Digging for Victory
Standing outside a Dublin hostelry in the drizzle, I fell into conversation with an Ulsterman…
Browsing: George Orwell
The Importance of Public Debate
At a recent debate organised by the English-Speaking Union (ESU) at its HQ, Dartmouth House…
Lessons from the Great Depression III
Don’t you ever read the papers? Roderick Spode is the founder and head of the…
Happy Birthday Mr Yeats
In Ireland literary deities hover over us like U.S. Presidents carved into Mount Rushmore. It…
Covid-19: A Simple Moral Calculus
Introduction There are still many unresolved questions regarding the pathogenesis of this disease and especially…
I Do Not Consent
I didn’t particularly want to write this article. I didn’t want to get involved in…
The Public Intellectual Series: Christopher Hitchens
Hardly a week goes by without someone asking me about my connection to Christopher Hitchens.…
Poetry in 2020: ‘Dream and so create’
At the end of 2019, I wrote: In these times it is perhaps inevitable that…
The Public Intellectual Series: Noam Chomsky
They who have put out the people’s eyes reproach them of their blindness. John Milton,…
Is George Orwell’s England Now Home to Fintan O’Toole’s Swivel-Eyed Loons?
It was flattering to read Fintan O’Toole respond, however oblique, to my criticism of his…