APRIL IN SPAIN. By John Banville.

APRIL IN SPAIN. By John Banville. Faber & Faber For much of this hugely enjoyable and exciting thriller, John Banville is in playful, almost skittish, mood. It’s the 1950s and Dublin pathologist Quirke (previously encountered in the books by the author’s former alter ego Benjamin Black), has embarked on a happy second marriage. He and […]

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Dylan Lyrics

Songs are not poems and song lyrics are not lines of verse to be read on a page. That should be self-evident, and thus when the Nobel committee announced that its 2016 prize for literature was to be awarded to Bob Dylan, lovers of both poetry and music were bemused. Yes, he probably deserved a […]

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THE LYRICS: 1956 to the Present. By Paul McCartney.

THE LYRICS: 1956 to the Present. By Paul McCartney. Edited and Introduced by Paul Muldoon. Allen Lane, £75 sterling From my adolescence onwards, Paul McCartney has been a constant musical companion in my day-to-day life – as he has been in the lives of so many others. And in the Lennon v McCartney debate that […]

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TV 10 December 2016

Instead of being satirical, the first instalment of This is Ireland with Des Bishop (RTE2) was merely scornful, which isn’t the same thing at all. Scoffing is easy, especially when you don’t bother with witty one-liners, and there was a marked absence of them in Bishop’s smugly superior tirade about the state of the nation. […]

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TV December 2016

My main problem with Classic Joe Dolan (RTE1) is that I had no idea what it was about. At the outset, narrator Simon Delaney spoke of “a concert film that almost went wrong”, but this went unexplained for the next thirty minutes. In the meantime, we heard from the ubiquitous Louis Walsh that “there was […]

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TV November 2016

At the very end of Enda (RTE1), which was screened over two nights, presenter Pat Leahy informed us that the current Taoiseach’s backbenchers were “restive, wondering when he will depart”, but there had been no indications of impatience from the Fine Gael colleagues who’d been interviewed over the previous two hours. That, of course, is […]

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Television – October 2016

So why didn’t serial killer Paul Spector die of the gunshot wounds he incurred at the end of The Fall’s second season? Silly question – there would have been no third season. But why is there a third season (RTE1/BBC1)? Hadn’t we had enough of this glum-faced family man and his murderous woman-hating other life […]

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TV 14 August 2016

Last Orders with Gay Byrne (RTE1) began arrestingly, with the veteran broadcaster recalling “the most awful feeling of foreboding and fright and anxiety” as he turned up daily for classes at the Christian Brothers’ school in Synge Street. This, he said, was “because I knew, like most of my classmates, that I was going to […]

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TV 11 June 2016

I’d love to have attended the RTE commisioning session at which someone pitched the idea for Farmer in Charge and someone in Montrose approved it. There’s always been a basic logic to the long-running At Your Service, in which the Brennan brothers have used their hotel expertise to advise ailing hospitality outlets on how to […]

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TV June 2016

For all I know, the offscreen Donal Skehan may well be the most laidback guy on the planet, but onscreen he lives his life in exclamation marks. “Wow!” he remarked of Budapest in the first instalment of Follow Donal (RTE1), a new series that has our chirpy food blogger and photographer taking weekly trips to […]

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TV May 2016

What if? That was the historical question posed over three nights last week on TG4, and it was also the historical question posed over three nights this week by TV3. What’s going on? With all the centenary overkill, have the channels run out of facts about 1916 and are obliged to resort to fictions? The […]

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There was only One Con Houlihan

Irish Independent, February 23, 2013 In one of his hundreds of sports columns from the 1970s, Con Houlihan paid tribute to the great Welsh scrumhalf, Gareth Edwards, who at that time was at the pinnacle both of his game and of his fame. A fitting subject, then, for a writer who had a lifelong and particular passion for […]

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James Plunkett

Sunday Miscellany, April 2013 Married to my mother’s sister, he was Jimmie Kelly to all who knew him and Uncle Jimmie to us, but to the world outside he was James Plunkett – Plunkett being his middle name – the noted broadcaster and writer who achieved global fame as the author of Strumpet City. However, it’s Uncle […]

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How do RTE’s Top Earners Manage to Survive?

Irish Independent, March 28, 2013 Spare a thought for Marian Finucane. She’s on air for an arduous two hours on Saturday mornings and then for an equally gruelling two hours on Sunday mornings, and RTE expects her to survive on a trifling €295,000 a year. Break that down and the figures are even more stark. Allowing for […]

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Brian O’ Driscoll

Sunday Miscellany, May 2012 “Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!” That was Francis Thompson’s recurring refrain in his 1870s poem, At Lord’s, as he recalled the cricketing heroes of his youth. If I were to rewrite this affecting poem today, the subject would be rugby, a sport I love more than cricket, and the refrain […]

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Lonely Voices: The Irish Short Story from James Joyce to Claire Keegan

Lecture given to Kate O’Brien Winter School, February 2010 What I want to do in this talk is to celebrate the Irish short story and, in the process, to try to define what makes it so distinctive – and, indeed, to try and tease out what has drawn so many Irish writers to it. But […]

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Letters to Monica by Philip Larkin

The decade following Philip Larkin’s death in 1985 was calamitous for his reputation. On his demise, he was the most widely loved poet of his time and his passing was mourned by people for whom his beautifully crafted and deeply felt lyrics were proof that contemporary verse didn’t have to be obscurantist and alienating. But […]

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On Canaan’s Side. By Sebastian Barry (Faber & Faber)

Irish Independent, July 23, 2011 Reviewing The Secret Scripture in 2008, I described Sebastian Barry as “an unrivalled chronicler of lost lives”, and his new novel also concerns people who, disregarded by society, have never been registered in the elitist ledgers of official history. As with its predecessor, the central character is a woman whose life coincides […]

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Pat Kenny

Irish Independent, 2010 When you switch on BBC2’s Newsnight and find that it’s being anchored, not by Jeremy Paxman, but by Kirsty Walk, Gavin Essler or Emily Maitlis, there’s a palpable sense of disappointment – alert and professional as these presenters are, they’re not Paxman and don’t create the same frisson of anticipation in the majority of viewers. […]

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The Late Late Show

Irish Independent, 2012 When President de Valera addressed the nation through the new medium of Irish television on New Year’s Eve, 1961, he compared broadcasting to atomic energy, both of which “can be used for incalculable good but can also do irreparable harm.” Indeed, he confessed that when he thought of the “immense power” of television and radio […]

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