In times gone by, most politicians were savvy enough not to attack motherhood. There was even a jokey phrase to allude to the sweetest things in life: “motherhood and apple pie”. Everything else had a dubious side, but mom and apple pie occupied a specially valued zone. Politicians of old grasped the point that everyone…
There’s to be a new strategy to protect and preserve the cultural heritage of the Travelling community, announced as part of National Heritage Week, just coming to a close. It’s made me reflect on historic attitudes to Travellers, which many of us may have inherited. I grew up with several mixed attitudes to Travellers, who’d…
I’m not much interested in crime, so the vast literature – and screen dramas – on ‘true crime’, and the even vaster canon on fictitious murder and gangsterism – have mostly passed me by. So I have only recently become aware of the existence of Daniel Kinahan, widely described as the boss of ‘the Kinahan…
When it comes to love affairs, or romantic entanglements, the question of who is luring whom can be a complex one. A Kenyan bishop, Hieronymus Emusugut Joya, has asked women to respect the celibacy of Catholic priests and not to tempt or “force them into affairs”. He has banned overnight guests at priests’ residences, and…
The US Vice-President J.D. Vance and his wife Usha have recently welcomed the birth of their fourth child. Yet American fertility as a whole continues to plummet. It’s down to an average of 1.6 infants per woman, with a marked trend, as elsewhere, towards the one-child family. Meanwhile, in China, society is coping with the…
My cousins in the Bordeaux region have been told to stay away from their home until these terrible wildfires – and the destruction and poisonous smoke they’ve caused – have receded. Appropriately, the scenes in south-western France, and Spain have been called ‘apocalyptic’. And in this summer of extreme heatwaves, climate change sceptics are being…
You’ll have noticed that there’s a current fascination with the ancient world, exemplified by Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster movie of The Odyssey, and the likes of Prof. Mary Beard constantly extolling the glories of Imperial Rome. Dominance Books tracing the dominance of pre-Christian Greece and Rome, and their influence on our civilisation flow regularly off the…
In the screen documentary about Edna O’Brien’s life, The Blue Road, made shortly before her death, the Co. Clare author said that one of her regrets was that she’d been so hopeless at managing money. She’d earned plenty of it, but she’d often been broke just the same. I’ve experienced, at a lesser level, similar…
Was the celebrity wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, the Kansas football star player, a good thing for the common good? On the one hand, it advertises the significance and meaning of matrimony, in an era when marriage is so widely in decline. And Simon Harris would scarcely have greeted the Taylor-Travis nuptials with…
Jeffrey Donaldson can expect a tough time in prison for his crimes – paedophiles and rapists are lowest in the penitentiary caste system. But there’s one English priest who is willing to reach out to him, to offer redemption and healing. However, the Rev. Jonathan Aitken is no ordinary Anglican pastor. He’s been an MP,…