The village I grew up in, settled in and even managed to find a husband in is a rural village in South Offaly called Cadamstown which lies at the foot of the Slieve Bloom Mountains. Visitors to the area come here regularly to experience its tranquility and beauty, one would never suspect that this village […]
Editor’s note: We have heard a lot about the toll Covid restrictions have taken on the wellbeing of young people. But three Maryland high school girls beat the lockdown blues by writing, illustrating and publishing an adventure story for young children. Well done, gi Here’s a sweet and delightful picture book for your little […]
March 17, 2021 will mark the centenary of the opening of Britain’s first family planning clinic at 61 Marlborough Road, Holloway, London. The Mothers’ Clinic gave poor and working-class women ready access to contraceptives for the first time. Funded by Dr Marie Stopes and her second husband, Humphrey Roe, it provided instruction in birth control and supplied […]
Famed traditional singer and much-loved Conemara composer, Tomás Mac Eoin, has won this year’s Gradam from RTÉ/Raidió na Gaeltachta in honour of a lifetime of work in conserving, promoting and celebrating the Irish language and traditional culture. Mac Eoin, from an Bóthar Buí in Conemara, is also an actor and a poet, and his command of […]
The Spanish philosopher Leonardo Polo (1926-2013) is not well known in the English-speaking world, and even if he were, his work is challenging for the lay reader. However, his ideas on what it means to be a free human being have inspired many students of philosophy, including Dutch university teacher Daniel Bernardus, who has, in this challenging year […]
Saolaíodh Naomh Odhrán i gceantar ina bhfuil Co. na Mí sa lá atá inniu ann, ar deireadh an 5ú haois. Ba de shliocht Chonall Gulban, rí Gaelach, a bhunaigh ríocht Thír Chonaill sa 5ú haois. Tá Gulban thar a bheith tábhachtach i stair Chríostaíocht na hÉireann mar gurb é an chéad uasal in Éirinn a […]
Two highlights of trad every year are the Patrick O’Keefe Festival in the heart of Sliabh Luachra, and Oireachtas na Gaeilge which celebrates the most beautiful of Irish singing, amhránaíocht ar an sean-nós, in a weekend of competitions and recitals each year. This year, along with everything else in these beleaguered times, both festivals are taking place […]
PODCAST: Listen to John Aidan Byrne, Irish commentator based in New York, interview Viktor Shvets on his new book, the Great Rupture Viktor Shvets’ medicine for overcoming our greatest financial challenge in decades – record global debt – is daring and controversial: Forget about repaying the massive bill of as much as […]
Every parent knows the feeling. Your child is crying and wants to go home, you pick them up to comfort them and move faster, your arms tired with a long walk ahead – but you cannot stop now. Now add to this a slick mud surface and a range of hungry predators around you. That […]
“Come on, he cried, come show your hand you, have boasted for so long How you could crush this rebel band with your armies great and strong ‘No surrender’ was his cry, and ever no retreat Brave Tracey cried before he died shot down in Talbot Street” ‘Seán Treacy’ by Dominic Behan This week […]
PODCAST: Listen to John Aidan Byrne, Irish commentator based in New York, interview Rod Dreher on his new book As a new left-wing cultural revolution takes to the streets and seizes control of American institutions, Rod Dreher renews the great Russian dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s stirring call to “live not by lies” – that […]
September 21 passed without special notice, as usual, this year. Perhaps, in future, that day might be remembered as Zdenek Hanzlik Day. Or, to make it easier on our clumsy tongues, we could call it Sid’s Day — that being the name by which the 60-year-old, originally from the Czech Republic, was always known in […]