I’m usually pleased to see Irish people achieve renown and an international status – from historic figures like Msgr O’Flaherty to contemporary ones like Colm Toibín or even the bumptious Michael O’Leary of Ryanair. But it’s only recently dawned on me that a sensational Irish celebrity brand now enjoying global recognition are – a bunch…

While the British parliament was engaged in debating the Assisted Dying Bill (which ran out of time last week, and therefore fell) – a personal and dramatic story emerged to capture public attention. Wendy Duffy was a former care worker in the West Midlands of England, although, by her own admission, she came originally from…

Ireland is famously a friendly country, and most visitors still seem to find a welcoming and sociable attitude to life here.  So it seems a puzzle as to why there are so many studies and reports about the ‘epidemic’ of loneliness in this country. The European Commission’s Joint Research Centre claims that 20% of Irish…

As I have sometimes mentioned, I grew up in Sandymount, a serene seaside suburb of Dublin 4, where Catholic and Protestant neighbours were generally on good terms, even though they kept separate spheres in education and recreation. Our immediate neighbours were Methodist and Presbyterian, whose services of worship were Bible-based and austere. But we also…

We used to call them ‘holy pictures’ back in the long-ago days of my convent education – cheap little copies of paintings by Raphael and Botticelli, on which we schoolgirls would write messages to each other on the obverse side. And now I realise how influential these images were in illuminating the epic events of…

Christopher Ewart-Biggs was a British ambassador to Ireland who was killed by the Provisional IRA in 1976. His widow endowed a prize in his name which would promote peace and understanding. This year’s Ewart-Biggs Memorial Prize has been won just this month by Fintan O’Toole and Sam McBride for their joint publication ‘For and Against…

So now, according to a new study, men are to blame for the dramatic fall in births all over Europe and the developed world. According to the report ‘Baby Bust’ (as opposed to ‘baby boom’), published by the Centre for Social Justice in London, the slow maturing of young men these days is what’s causing…

In 1918, when Britain and Ireland were still politically conjoined, the vote was finally extended to women. Yet it was initially restricted to women over 30 years of age who were property owners. The male politicians who still held the reins were nervous of the ‘flapper’ element among younger women: fearful that those under thirty…

There’s a programme on BBC Radio 4 on Wednesday evenings called ‘The Moral Maze’ (which my colleague Brendan O’Regan has on occasions reviewed). It approaches a series of topical questions within the framework not just of debate, but with the focus on the moral analysis. What is the right thing to do? What is the…