Handel’s Messiah was the soundtrack to Christmas Day in our house. It was a bit, or more likely totally, above our heads but it gradually, over many years, soaked up the strangeness and wonder, the mysterious otherworldliness of Christmas. The smells and tastes, the treats, the novelties that the kindly Santa left for us on […]
PODCAST: Listen to John Aidan Byrne, Irish commentator based in New York, interview Tulsa’s Scott Pryor re his upcoming movie The box office hit TULSA has just became the #2 All-Time Box Office for self-distributed films and announced that it will be available for streaming everywhere on February 2nd. TULSA is an unlikely […]
In a new book, political science professor at Boise State University, Professor Scott Yenor, makes it clear that the rise of individual autonomy brought about by the sexual revolution is hardly an “unmixed blessing”. In the book, The Recovery of Family Life: Exposing the Limits of Modern Ideologies, Professor Yenor skillfully examines the ideologies of contemporary liberalism, radical feminism, and sexual liberation […]
Clive James, who died a year ago aged 80 after a long illness, was many things: a media celebrity, a TV pundit, an interviewer and roaming traveller; an essayist, literary critic and author of five volumes of autobiography; lastly, a poet. Indeed, putting aside the other hats he put on and off in rapid succession, I suspect that poetry, that fascination for using words in a compressed space for memorable effect, was his first and last love. Much of television fame is, […]
The Tyranny of Merit is not the sort of book that you expect to emerge from a lecture theatre at that den of wokeness, Harvard University. But the author, Michael Sandel, is one of its best-known professors, a rock star intellectual who fills auditoriums around the world with engaging and challenging lectures on justice. What makes […]
“You matter because of who you are. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die.” Dame Cicely Saunders, founder of the first modern hospice Inay (Maxima) My name is Dona Marie. I […]
Carmel Gunning is one of Ireland’s most accomplished and well-known traditional musicians, a virtuoso tin whistle and flute player, and a renowned singer and composer. She has also spent a life-time teaching traditional music, particularly in the uptempo, lifty, exciting Sligo style formed from that county’s immense tapestry of culture and tradition. I’ve had the […]
This weekend, as has become completely normal over the space of the past few months, the players of Millwall and Derby County, prior to kickoff in their Sky Bet Championship game, took a knee in the middle of the field, to protest racism. And the crowd, of just 2,000 supporters, booed them. The sporting media, […]
Kevin’s Myers’ latest book is a memoir of a life dangerously and daringly lived both on and off the printed page. Despite the title, it is not a cascade of self defence against the signal injustice the author suffered when he was summarily dismissed by The Sunday Times in 2017 on the now thorougly debunked charge […]
Following the fitting commemoration of those killed at Croke Park in November 1920, it is apt to recall that the other main stand and the terrace adjacent to Hill 16 are also named in honour of two great Irishmen, Michael Cusack and P.W Nally, who also died in the month of November. Michael Cusack, of an […]
Luis de Moya, a Catholic priest and pro-life campaigner, died in Pamplona, Spain, on November 9, aged 67 Late in his life, don Luis de Moya started to look like Superman. Christopher Reeve, that is, the Hollywood actor who starred in Superman I, II, III and IV. They both had neatly combed hair, firm jaws, […]
The author, Kilian Foley Walsh, is a writer, and former President of Young Fine Gael In early November, I wrote a column for the Sunday Times about the Government’s decision to take the country to level 5. The long and short of my argument was that the powers that be take little notice of the economic and […]