Poet, Critic & Journalist

September 29, 2012 So was it worth all the hype? Did it merit an embargo so strictly enforced that anyone outside the author’s immediate family didn’t see the book until 8am this Thursday? And after seven Harry Potter adventures, did The Casual Vacancy reveal that JK Rowling had finally grown up? Well, to answer the last question first, […]

Irish Independent, September 8, 2012 Christopher Hitchens revelled in doing battle with political and religious foes, but all his debating and writing skills proved no match for the most intimate and lethal enemy of all, and so the oesophagal cancer that had breached his bodily defences in 2010 killed him last December. Not that he had any time […]

Irish Independent, November 10, 2012 Now in its fifth edition, David Thomson’s Biographical Dictionary of Film has long been an indispensable bible for people who love to read and think about the movies. And an idiosyncratic one, too, because, despite its dull title and dictionary format, it’s a book crammed with shrewd insights, eloquent enthusiasms and withering putdowns. […]

Irish Independent, May 4, 2013 When asked how he achieved his lithe and spare prose style, the great crime writer Elmore Leonard said it was really quite simple – at the end of each day he revised what he’d just written “and whenever I come across an adjective I strike it out”. Indeed, sometimes it seems that […]

Irish Independent, February 18, 2012 The decade following a writer’s death is often the most cruel to his status. During his lifetime, Graham Greene was viewed as the most vitally topical of novelists, but on his demise in 1991 he was downgraded as too caught up in his times to be relevant anymore and his reputation has never […]

Irish Independent, August 25, 2012 On the inside cover of Ian McEwan’s thirteenth full-length book, Peter Kemp of the Sunday Times declares its author to be “the supreme novelist of his generation”. Not, you will note, the supreme English novelist or even the supreme British novelist but simply the best in the world in whatever language. Indeed, so […]

Irish Independent, April 13, 2013 When Irish yachtsman Tom first encounters Irish lawyer Clare, it’s at the quayside of Ortigia on Sicily’s south-east coast and he’s about to embark on a one-night stand with a French woman who has moored nearby. When he meets Clare again the next day, the French woman has sailed off into the sunrise. […]

Irish Independent, October 22, 2011 Government relations with RTE have always been fraught with deep suspicion and never more so than in 1967 when long-time RTE career man TP Hardiman became the station’s third director-general. Erskine Childers had recently been appointed Minister for Posts and Telegraphs, a brief that included responsibility for broadcasting, and during a dinner with […]